We then headed out to find a temple. We had to stop for some sakura soft ice cream along the way (cherry blossom). Satomi said it was good, very light, not heavy. We then stopped for Sweet Potato gelato a little further down the road. It's Satomi's favourite so Clara and I had to try some. It's purple. It's very good. It takes like sweet potato. I kind of expected it to be different. But it surprisingly taste just like sweet potato and that’s a good thing. It's odd, in a good way.
We wandered the streets on the way to another temple. We saw little kimono shops and restaurants and a ryokan that was well over a hundred years old all lining the street leading up to the temple gate. As we entered in the garden at the base was beautiful. I want to say stunning but it is the wrong word. It is serene. It's green and lush and quiet, despite the throngs of fellow tourists, and, well, calming. We climbed the stairs up through the garden that lead to the temple that sits on top of this huge hill. There's one big main building and a few other smaller ones around it. There were tonnes of people. There's a little building with a giant wooden contraption that you spin for good luck. We saw some artifacts from the temple that have been preserved in a show room. They were really old. And some coins that came originally from China but that were dug up near by. Some of them were from before 700 AD. Un-freaking-believable. We went into the main building and there's this giant golden statue. It was odd looking around a people and seeing their different reactions. It was like being in a cathedrale in Europe. Most people (today this included me) were just looking around and sort of taking it in, but then there were others (today this was not me, but in Europe it was me) who were moved by the place of worship. There was one lady who you could tell was praying earnestly and was moved in her spirit by what she was seeing. Interesting. Up above the main building we climbed up to another view point. On the way down, there was this little corner of all these little Buddha guys. Some were really small, some were kinda medium sized, many of them had little home knit tea cozy hats on. Don't want their little Buddha head's to get a chill up there on that mountain top. Some even had little clothes on and keitai charms hanging from them.
Most of my pictures of today had to be of roof tops and such as I was trying to get some good flattering pictures, no small feat considering the hundreds of people who were in the same location as me. The weather started to turn and although it was bad, it just wasn't a nice day out anymore. I got to see the ocean!!! My heart leaped for joy when I saw the water. I couldn't believe how much I had missed it. I was starting to feel it a few days ago and had even considered trying to find some bit of waterfront in like Funabashi or something. I found a picture in the flyers that daily come to my door of a beautiful beach and the locator map looked like it was around here somewhere, but I couldn't make out the station name in Kanji, and so the location remains a mystery. I still want to find it because although I saw the ocean today and it made me feel a little better, I still have a growing desire to just sit at the water's edge and watch her roll in. I have always been a West Coast girl, and I forever will be at least a Coast girl, which Coast is fully up for discussion.
We headed back down the hill and entered the cave shrine. It was really small and really dark and I said that I felt like the Viet-cong or something. There's these carvings in the walls and they have little candles lit below that as offerings. Then we hit the street again. We decided to head back towards the station and to rustle up some grub. It was quite the walk back, especially considering that by this time it was almost three and we hadn't had lunch yet. We ate some lame "Italian" food and then headed down the main shopping drag of the town. All these temples and shrines are built around the town of Kamakura. So there's a real town thriving off, mostly, the tourists and visiting Japanese that come there throughout the year. The main drag up to the Shrine was about the most European feeling thing since arriving here. Some of the shops were decidedly Japanese, but there was a flowering boulevard down the middle of the street where you could walk and sidewalks (virtually unknown in Japan) and even a Polo Ralph Lauren. Odd.
The shrine has a very impressive massive red torii gate at all the entrances. The one we went in by starts with a huge old rock arched bridge, that you're not allowed on anymore because it's too old, so we went on the little flat ones that were constructed long ago to save the cool old one. Then it's a big, long, open, dusty walk that is evidently lined with booths through the summers up to the first building at the base of the massive wide set of stairs up to the shrine. Everything was big and open and the buildings were all very ostentatious and ornate, whereas the Buddhist temples are more unassuming (mostly anyway, other than the huge golden statues and giant bronze Buddhas). The temples are more like places that are supposed to bring you to calm and into a Zen like state, whereas the shrines are meant to be glorifying to the gods that are inside. I don't know. I don't know the differences of the religions at the heart of them, so I don't know how it truly plays out, these are just the observations I made through today as they seemed to be to me.
We headed back out and caught the train. We were greedy with the seats of the train this time, and the trains were WAY less crowded on the way back. We stopped back at Katsutadai for some Indian food near the rest of their homes. I ate and then headed out on my own at just after 8:30 for one more train stop up where I was meeting a bunch of folks to go bowling. I was about an hour late, but whatever. Bowling was odd. Fun and clearly reminiscent of bowling back home, but in the middle of people's games they stop everyone, turn on the black lights and then the people who's turn it was all have to bowl at the same time, then who ever gets a strike on the black light bowl gets a prize and gets their picture taken in a giant bowling pin outfit with all their friends. Then it all goes back to normal. We had a lot of fun. And then we got tokens for the gambling machines downstairs so the guys had to use up their free tokens, I pretty much gave mine over to be used in the machine that Dave had been working on. It was funny to watch them get so excited about one coin possibly going to drop, common, drop, oooooh, so close..with every coin put in the machine.
So now it's almost 2, I left the house at 8:30 this morning. And I'm meeting some folks on the platform again tomorrow just after 9 to go in to Tokyo.
