5th Jan - 6th Jan
Kamakura! I cannot recommend this place enough! It's like visiting multiple places at once, each so different with a beautiful sense of calm around.
We decided we wanted to have a day outside of Tokyo, there were some obvious choices such as Mt. Fuji but we decided not to waste too much of our short time in Japan travelling. Kamakura was perfect; about an hour on the train, about £10-£15 to get there unless you have a JR pass then it's included!
It was so easy to get there from our hotel, hopped on the line and on the way there it was very quiet as we went pretty early, partly due to jet leg partly to try and avoid the crowds.
We had the most beautiful day; the sun was shining and this made it very easy to get around. There are buses to take you to the temples which are a bit further away but we decided to enjoy the scenery and stick to walking.
1st stop was the Great Buddha located inside Kotokuin Temple, this cost 300Yen. It was huge, like, I knew it was going to be big but there's just something so good about seeing it up close, the pictures don't do it justice! You can also go inside, we chose not too for a reason I cannot remember.. :) The pictures don't really do it justice..
A short walk away (around 10 mins) was Hase Temple (Hasedera). We walked though the small town, stopping in some lovely quaint shops on the way.
This cost 400Yen to enter and the grounds were great to explore and absolutely beautiful.
There were some cool tunnels which you could go through and see the offerings that were in there. You just had to duck the whole time!
The really cool thing about the grounds is that there were 2 levels. The higher level gave up some amazing views of the area gave us an idea of where to head next too! I mean, the views don't even look like Japan in January!
These views gave us the perfect place to head to next, we spied a beach so naturally wanted to check out the beach! This only took about 15 minutes and it was so worth it. The views from the beach were lovely, it did not look like it was early January. One thing I did notice was the amount of wind surfers about, they just made the view even better!
So we were going to head back at this point but we did notice that when we got off the train that we went the opposite direction to everyone else. We didn't have any internet so couldn't Google what was there but was so happy with what we found. These happened to be the gates to Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, Kamakura's most important Shrine. I mean we should have probably planned this a bit better so we knew it was there but it was very last minute.. oops. In a way I actually preferred the surprise. The amount of people there was incredible, all fit into this narrow street which was full of food with the temple situated at the end of the street. IT WAS AMAZING, I think we walked up and down it a few times so I could decide what I can try.. :)
I finally decided on 3 things.. (it was way too hard to get it down to 3) which I could est easily without overdoing it. Sugar coated Strawberries were lovely and very sweet, I love a good waffle so obviously had to be on there, this was a chocolate chip one and was lovely, lastly there was a coffee icecream... this was sooooo good! It did have a 'proper' name but I was too excited to eat it so I don't remember :(, for me, coffee and ice-cream together is just the dream.
Talking about food.. we had an amazing meal that night! Following me convincing Matt to try to ramen it was his pick for food, he went for pizza because what can go wrong with pizza?! I am so glad he did; we went to The Grill Republic Chicago Pizza & Beer. It was situated in the middle of a shopping centre and it was very quiet, probably the quietest place we went really!
The staff were very helpful and welcoming even though there was a bit of a language barrier, good old Google Translate photo app came in very handy! I do try and learn a little of the language before we go anywhere but saying hello and thank-you over and over probably isn't the best thing to do.. :)
Started with some free soup in a cup which was lovely! And having not been to Chicago (yet, should be there in Sept 21 so fingers crossed) it was the best deep pan I have had.
Last day! I wanted to make this a 'lets walk around as much as we can before the late flight.' and we did! We had a mooch around the shipping centre in Shibuya and the little shops around. Everything was so colourful! Had a Starbucks, bought some different foods to take home and found another temple... I couldn't tell you what or where it was, we found it walking about back to the subway. It was lovely though! Obviously I managed to find some more street food.. this time a cheese stuffed fried potato.. SO GOOD :) Then off to the airport we went...
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