Last Friday, the 20th, was a holiday so there was no school. I decided to take a trip but Lori and Mike had planned on staying back so I was going to be all by myself. I wasn't sure where to go though, so I talked to Keiko about some ideas. We've been to Tokyo and big city areas a lot, so I decided I wanted to go to something on the more historical side. Keiko suggested Kamakura, which is south of Tokyo and close to the ocean. She helped me plan out some sites to see and even found me a tour guide for the morning. I was thankful for Keiko's help, but I wasn't sure I wanted a tour guide or if I could really afford one. Fortunately, the tour was free except for the fees for transportation which I would have had to pay for anyway.
Keiko had set me up with a 9:30 am tour, so I had to get up at the crack of dawn to meet Yoko, my tour guide at the station in Kamakura. It took about two hours by train and I was lucky I didn't really have much confusion getting there. Once I got off the train to meet Yoko, it was pouring rain! I felt horrible about making this poor woman get up early to show me around in the storm, but she was very cheerful and excited to see me regardless. Yoko was probably in her fourties and was from the next town over, so she knew Kamakura very well. It was just her and I on the tour, so she was able to tell me a lot about Kamakura and its history and I could aks questions too.
Our first stop was Hasedera Temple. It was a Buddhist temple, made for Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy. Some of the statues were similar to those Lori, Mike and I saw in Asakusa. The gardens around the temple were beautiful I tried to get some good pictures, but since it was raining so hard I didn't want Yoko to have to stop and wait for me too much.
The garden was full of little ponds and bridges. The ponds had cute little goldfish in them too!
The cherry blossoms were starting to come out here! I can tell they're going to be beautiful when they're in full bloom.
Magnolias in full bloom. We've seen a couple of these trees close by the school too.
Yoko was so friendly and we ended up having a good time together. It was nice having her with me because I learned so much about what I was seeing and more about Buddhist practices. I don't know a whole lot about Buddhism, but I know there are thousands of gods that people worship. This is not an easy thing to grasp, but I try to keep an open mind when viewing them temples and shrines. One of the shrines inside this temple was for children, but especially for children that had died as a result of abortion or miscarriages.
Here, people could write in prayers and hopes on wooden cards for these children. 
The statue here is the protector of the children. His staff is suppose to help him travel the world and allow him to heal children and mothers who have lost children. All around him were flowers and smaller statues of the same man.
Yoko and I walked up several flights of stairs to where the giant statue of Kannon was. I wasn't allowed to take pictures once I was inside, but it was so big that I probably would have gotten a very accurate picture anyway. Yoko told me about a Buddhist legend that was said to be the orgin of the statue. She told me that supposedly a monk found a tree large enough to make two statues of Kannon; the lower half is in Nara's Hasedera Temple and the upper half was thrown into the sea. Fifteen years later, it washed up on shore near Kamakura, was found by the locals, and so the temple for it was built. It was interesting, but Yoko didn't seem like she believed it either.
At the top of the mountain, Yoko and I stopped at a small cafe that had a look out of the Pacific Ocean. We had a yummy little treat of green tea and Japanese sweets, and chatted for a little bit about my trip and the tours she does. She was nice enough to give me a few souveneers; a few origami paper cranes and little key chains that were shells covered in scraps of old kimonos.
As we made our way back down, we stopped inside a few more of the temple's sites. Yoko showed me Benten-kutsu Cave filled with the Seven Lucky Gods of Japan. The tunnels of the cave were so low; I had to bend over quite a bit and I'm not even tall! I wish I could have gotten pictures because it was actually pretty cool inside, but it was started to get crowded as the skies were clearing up. Yoko also showed me a building for copying the Sutra, which she said was becoming a more popular thing to do. I got this picture from outside, but I kind of look like a creep because it has my shadow in it!
Our next stop was Daibutsu, or the Great Buddha, which is one of Japan's national treasures. It is 34 feet tall and made of bronze. I got to go inside it for 20 yen (about 20 cents), but it was much better looking on the outside.
What would a Great Buddha be without great big sandals for his feet?!? Yoko told me these were donated by an elementary school class. After visiting Buddha, they noticed his feet were bear and wanted to give his something to walk around in.
After Daibustu, Yoko had to leave so I was on my own for the rest of the day. By this time the weather was completely cleared up; it was sunny and probably about 65 degrees. It was after 12, so I decided to find some lunch. I was able to find a small little restaurant that served huge bowls of ramen noodles (which are 100 times better than the stuff at home that you can heat up in the microwave). The only open table in the restaurant was one in the back where an older woman was seated. She didn't try talking to me at first, so I pulled out a book until my food came. It was delicious, full of vegetables, shrimp, 
and noodles.
and noodles. Once I was eating the woman at the table with me got a calculator and punched out "82" and then showed it to me. At first I panicked, wonder what I was going to have to pay $82 for, but then she pointed to herself with a big smile on her face. She was telling me that she was 82 years old, and proud of it! I wrote out that I was from America and 21 years old. Then I told her my soup was good. I think she was actually the mother of the one waitress in the store.
After lunch I decided to head over to the coast since it had gotten to nice out. On my way over, I saw this basket of Home Depot bags. What are those doing over here?
It felt so nice to walk on the beach. Yuigahama Beach was definitely not the prettiest beach I've seen (there was lots of trash and washed up seaweed on it) but it sure felt good to walk with my feet in the sand and water. It was way too cold for swimming, but there were lots of guys trying to surf. I don't think the waves were quite big enough for that either though. 
I walked quite a ways down along the beach, just relaxing in the sunshine and ocean water :).
I stopped to ask a woman if she could take a picture of me and the water and her daughter join me. The woman spoke English really well so we talked for a while about my trip. It was her daughter's first time seeing the ocean and she was running and and having a great time splashing in the waves. This little girl had just had her kindergarten graduation ceremony from a Christian school; I had to do a double take to make sure she wasn't one of ours!
I didn't want to leave the beach, but I thought I'd better check out a couple other places before heading back to the train station. I headed over to Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine, which was packed with people. It reminded me alot of Asukusa Temple because the street leading up to it was full of little huts and shops on both sides and was so narrow and because the inside of the temple was pretty similar. I didn't end up staying to long at the Shrine; I was getting tried from waking up so early and from walking around. I climbed to the top of the Shrine, which was up on a mountain and had another great view of the coast.
This was the only tree in the area that had blossoms on it. People were packed around it taking pictures! They really do love these cherry blossoms!
The first building is the gate and the one farther was the temple on the mountain.
There were several people feeding pigeons at the Shrine. I decided to skip this cultural experience. Instead, I bought these cookies that look like pigeons! Yum!
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