Japan, Day 8, Kamakura
Posted By Mike Gfeller on December 15, 2014
Woke up at 4AM and wrote blog for Day 6. I woke up Wolfgang at 6A. I think John had told me that Tokyo was known for its French toast. I turned to handy dandy Google and lo and behold, the Orchid Room, a restaurant located in Hotel Okura where we were staying, was supposed to have superb French toast. I ordered the French toast and Wolfgang ordered a cheese omelet. They brought ketchup for the omelet which Wolfgang devoured. The French toast was in fact excellent…expensive but excellent. I also had some coffee and fresh fruit with my toast and then we headed back up to the room. Today we were headed to Kamakura, a beach resort located about an hour south of Tokyo on the regular train. Wolfgang wanted to go see the Buddha there, which is incredibly old. It supposedly was once covered by a wooden building until a tsunami washed the building away several hundred years ago.
We left the hotel and walked down the hill to the grey line, which we took to Ginza station a couple of stops away. Then we transferred to the Maranouchi line to Ikebukuro where we met John and Swee-Chi. John was late again and my feet were hurting bad. I wasn’t amused. We then took the JR train to Kamakura. There are a lot of shrines in this town. Swee-Chi tried to get me to go to several of them but I was having a hard time walking. After we got off the train we headed west uphill through the town. We stopped at a really cool Starbucks, which allowed me the opportunity to sit down and rest. We left Starbucks and then did some shopping. There are dozens of unique gift shops lining the street leading up to the Buddha (kind of Disneyesque). I stopped at this little outdoor area where many of the shops were selling their gifts. I bought Gunnar some flip flops shaped like fish. I bought Kris a bunch of different little gifts, including a scarf and a lucky cat. I bought myself some of those little balls with the chimes in them that make music when you roll them around in your hand. I also found a shirt for Gunnar that had Japanese writing on it with the translation written below. The translation was: “Believe in meat only”. Swee-Chi saw it and thought it was really funny. We then came across this cool shop that had swords, knives, and many other types of weapons (just for show, but Wolfgang thought they were cool). Wolfgang wanted to buy one of the weapons but I talked him out of it.
We finally made it to the Buddha. I’ve got pictures of it on my Flickr account. It is very large and very bronze. It is so large that you can walk inside of it and there are notes about how it was made. You can still see the toolmarks from the original craftsman that made it hundreds of years ago. Very cool. We walked back down the hill much quicker than it took us to walk up. We came back to the train station and took the train further down the coast to find a place to eat. I think Swee-Chi knew of a place but I don’t think it was there any longer. The beach was just to our east, with a road running along it and then houses/shops lining the street. There was an island to our south and John pointed out Mount Fuji in the distance. It was the only time we got a good look at it, but it was still pretty amazing to see. We ended up eating pizza and then we walked across the street to the beach. John got in the water. Wolfgang and I just watched. There was a black kite circling overhead. I got a few pictures of all of it. Wolfgang found some Styrofoam mallet and he and John took turns swinging it around. I picked up a rock from the beach which I intend to varnish and use as a paperweight. There were signs on the seawall, which was about 15 feet high, that had tsunami instructions on it. Probably necessary because of the local tectonic activities.
We took the train back to Kamakura and walked through a different part of town. This part of town was full of smaller shops and lots of odd foodstuffs. John bought some ice cream for himself, Swee-Chi and Wolfgang. It was a swirl of green tea/sweet potato. I didn’t want any part of that. I think even Wolfgang said it was sketchy. We walked back to the JR station and headed back to Tokyo. We arrived back around 1535 and took the subway to Shibuya. This is a famous part of Tokyo with lots of lights and thousands of people. We saw the famous bronze statue of the dog Hachiko. See link here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachik%C5%8D. It is a very popular place to meet because everyone knows about this dog. We went to the Heckel store, which is like an Amway store, because they had a Retro 51 pen that I was looking for. Actually they had two of them, so I bought them. Then we headed to the Tokyu Hands department store. This store is amazing and they have everything. I think the store in Shibuya was 7 or 8 stories tall. There were 5 Retro 51 pens that Tokyu Hands sold exclusively. I found two of them and they were kind enough to reserve another 3 at the Shinjuku store, where we planned to go the next day.
Swee-Chi and John both wanted to go to The Sizzler (American again!) for the salad bar in Shibuya. We all four went. John was giving me directions for the subway but my feet couldn’t walk any further. We hailed a cab and for about 3000 yen made it back to the hotel in about 15 minutes. It was 3000 yen well spent. I had a couple of beers when I got back into the room and then I crashed. Day 8 was over. Only one more full day in Tokyo before heading back to the states. I’m going to miss this place.
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