Breakfast was scheduled for 8:00, but if we felt so inclined, we could meet at the entrance to the ryokan at 7:00 and go hang out at the beach for a while. I felt so inclined, because waking up after 6:30 would be way sleeping in for me. So a number of us walked back to the beach on Sunday morning. The weather showed no signs of deviating from the perfection that it was the day before, and the beach was relatively empty. Looking back, it was really empty. It didn’t really occur to me before I typed this up, but there must not be many people waking up early on a Sunday to go to the beach.

Compared to the awful beach in Odawara, this beach was quite nice in the daytime. While some collected shells or started wading, I took full advantage of the opportunity to do nothing. Having seen the itinerary for the day already, I knew that this day wouldn’t be any less tiring than the last.

At 8:00 we had breakfast. Again, it was unlike anything in America. There was a wide selection of fully-intact fish. Some dumpling-like things, some egg-ish things. I wish I knew the proper name, but I don’t. I snagged a great deal of rice, some salad, and the dumpling and egg-ish things. At 9:00 we left the ryokan, and headed out toward the station again.

We wound up at Kamakura station, and then took a bus to our first stop: Hokokuji temple. Although it contained a temple, the big draw was its large bamboo grove. I’ve actually got a large picture of a bamboo grove in my room back home, so I was excited to go to a real one. It didn’t disappoint, and I found it to be an awesome place to take pictures because of the compositional possibilities. I was able to latch onto some of the stalks with my tiny tripod and take some long exposure shots as well, which allows a very deep depth of field.

Our next stop was Tsurugaoka Hachimangu. This was a very large shinto shrine that featured a 1000 year old Ginkgo tree. There also happened to be a shinto wedding happening on a raised stage in the middle of the shrine grounds. While the music going with it felt like it were taken directly out of a Kenji Mizoguchi film, there wasn’t much going on. Especially from the distance that we were, it was nearly impossible to appreciate.

We also got a chance to draw lots (おみくじ), which are pieces of paper that have a fortune on them. We’re not talking about your wimpy fortune cookie fortunes. These ones will actually make a claim. Mine happened to make the bad luck claim. The paper itself breaks things down into eight catagories, including work, school, relationships, illness, etc. All of them were either bad or neutral. I believe there is something worse than the simple bad luck one that I got, and I want to see one, because it’s pretty funny.

Now, what you’re supposed to do if you get a bad luck fortune is to tie it to a tree or a apparatus in the shrine designed for that purpose like this. But I’m taking mine home. I wonder if the shrines put a disproportionate number of bad luck ones in there so that more people will “decorate” their shrine with tied pieces of paper.

Lunch came around eventually, and we had some options. Considering I wasn’t terribly hungry and I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, the most appealing option for me was McDonalds. So, for the first time since coming here, I went there.

Although McDonalds has an awful reputation in the states, it seems to have a different atmosphere over in Japan. It seems to be a legitimate hanging-out place, the restaurants don’t feel dirty, and one doesn’t have to feel ashamed when entering it (as I do in America). I got a teriyaki burger. The entire meal was 650 yen, which is cheaper than MOS burger. It didn’t taste nearly as good as MOS burger, but it was good enough.

Stephen and I killed the remaining time given to us in the lunch hour by having what has become our trademark, highly-referential conversations that flows smoothly between philosophical musing and non-sequitur.

After lunch, we went to Hasedera temple. So, just to make sure things are clear, a shrine is a Shinto building, a temple is a Buddhist building. The main draw in this temple was a 30 foot tall carving of Buddha from a single tree. Unfortunately, I had already seen the world’s largest carving of Buddha from a single tree which happens to be in Beijing. Jaded!

The final stop was the famous Daibutsu, or Great Buddha. This is one of the more famous sights in Japan, and the biggest tourist attraction in Kamakura. It’s about 13 meters tall. You can actually go inside the daibutsu. I’m glad that I did because it was very cool and I got a good picture, but it was really, really hot. You could imagine how the inside of what is essentially a large copper box gets after being struck directly by the sun for several hours.

We got our group photos in, did some souvenir shopping (I bought… a coke), and walked around the temple that houses the daibutsu. As it was getting late in the day, the troops were getting a bit tired, so we soon packed up and got on the train to Shinjuku. All in all, a very nice trip, and what I would call “sightseeing done right.” We did a ton of touristy things, but it never felt touristy. There was a nice variety of sights, so despite the fact that we essentially just went to a bunch of temples and shrines, it didn’t feel like we just saw the same thing over and over. The teachers were great through the whole process, and I would love a chance to do another trip with them, but alas, the culture class is drawing to a close and I’m not allowed to take it again next semester.

Foreground (left to right): Jared, Trisna, Lori

Before we got on the train, we parted with Kato-sensei, who actually lives in Kamakura. It seemed like an awfully far away place to live for someone who worked in Tokyo, but then I remembered that it was only about an hour away from Shinjuku, which puts it about in the average commute time for Japanese who work in Tokyo.

On the train ride back, I had to stand the whole time and and attempted to read. It was nearly impossible. Maybe I’ll learn to read on a train someday, especially if I wind up in a homestay, but there were way too many things going on including a very confusing poster for me to concentrate much on the book.

I went directly back to the dorm after arriving in Shinjuku and started the work of sorting out all my pictures and preparing for the inevitable blog entry to recap the trip. That task is finally over, and I can put the trip behind me and look forward to summer vacation, which starts next week.