Trip to Kamakura with its large Shrine and the Great Buddha

I'm back already with a new update of half of my travels this past weekend. On Saturday we took a day trip to this place called Kamakura, which is a little south of Tokyo. There they have the 鶴岡八幡宮, or Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine (don't worry, I can't read that either), which I go over in the first part of the post. It is also home to the Great Buddha ("daibatsu"), which is in the second part. This was the first time since being in Japan that we had gone to a shrine/non-urban or city scape area, so it was really amazing to see this in person.

The other half of my travels this past weekend were to both one of the aquariums in Yokohama, which was amazing, and to Minato Mirai (see earlier post), but I actually rode the ferris wheel and did other things this time. This second half of my travels will come in another update (as I have yet to get the pictures from friends, my camera was out of battery the whole time). Anyways, let's get started.


Entrance to the Shrine

My friend Tim in front of one of the good fortune cats that are all over the place. Left paw up means it brings in customers, while right paw up brings wealth and good luck.

A small bridge in front of the shrine you are not allowed to go on. You can slightly see the shrine behind it.

Approaching the shrine, food stands on either side.

So there were these hawks flying around everywhere as we were approaching. I could easily see five flying at one time. I managed to snap a photo of two of them together. The reason I include this is because, before I took this picture, we witnessed one of the hawks dive down into the crowd of people and grab someones food right out of their hands with their claws. That is when I decided I wasn't going to buy any food there.

A cool little off to the side island area with pretty trees.

In the water right on the shore of that little island was a soft shelled turtle, which I heard are rare.

Not sure what this is, but thought it was picture worthy

Apparently these bottles are used for holding sake. That's a lot of alcohol.



The first, smaller shrine below the much larger one.

Another angle

The greenery surrounding the shrine, as well as the large set of stairs to get there. And the back of my buddy Ken (he's not a Japanese "buddy" though)

Cool tree next to the steps

One of a couple of photos that I took of myself, to prove that I actually was there myself. And you can see Ken taking a photo as well.

After the stair climb, you come up to this rather large shrine. This is one side of it.

I'm not exactly sure what these are used for, maybe festivals.

You could toss in some coins in to the large container in front of the shrine (inside of which there were people doing some sort of ceremony). After you toss the money in you clap your hands and then bow and pray.

Some stairs we found off the to side. Not knowing where they lead, we decided to go up.

The stairs, structures, and plants made for a cool picture.

Me again! At the top of the stairs, there was a mini shrine type thing. But no one else was there but us.

Front of the mini shrine

Close up of one of the protecting dogs in front of it.

Another cool photo from the way down.


View of a hill from atop another side of the main shrine.

Pretty nice weather that day and lots of trees.

Looking down the steps from the top, clearly.

So there were people feeding the pigeons at the bottom of the steps. If you did this, the pigeons would fly all over you and land on all parts of your body, trying to get food. It was amusing.


Pigeons flying all over the place


A welsh corgi I found! Tried not to make it look like I was actually taking a photo of the lady's dog.

Now leaving the shrine area. Really cool, lamp-lined walkway down the center of the road.

A group of cute dogs we ran across walking through the streets. How could you not like them? They look so happy!


Anyways, we then hopped on a short local train ride and took a short walk to arrive to...

The Great Buddha! Apparently cast in 1252 (A.D.) and weighing 121 tons, it was quite large and impressive.

Another, hip angle of the Buddha

That big ball thing in front of the Buddha was filled with incense and smoke was bellowing out of it. I felt sorry for the guy cleaning it, he was constantly getting a face full of smoke. You can also see the offering of some sort of fruit in front of the Buddha.

The Great Buddha needs great sandals.

Buddha from the side. It definitely looked a lot bigger in person than it does in these photos.

A group shot of us guys in front of the Great Buddha



For some reason I decided to take a video of the Great Buddha. In it, you can see the Great Buddha, Tim making a face, Ken, and Randy!


Having left the Great Buddha, we stumbled upon this really odd store, which kept a ton of weapons as well as a ton of regular, touristy souvenirs. You can't read it, but these axes and other deadly weapons you see had the funniest English names. One of the axes was named after a heavy metal band apparently, another was called "The Demon's Rage" or something along those lines. This is only a small corner of the store, it had a ridiculous amount of crazy-ass weapons all over the place, including real wolverine claws.

But not everything there was deadly! They had this cute cat that was just sleeping on a stool all by itself. Aw.

Well that does it for my trip to Kamakura. It was a lot of fun and quite interesting, definitely go there if you ever go to Japan. I expect we may go back sometime during the rest of our time here.

This coming Saturday, the entire program is leaving for a week-long field trip (which also means a week-long school vacation) to both Kyoto and Hiroshima. I do not know if we will have internet access while we are there, but either way I do not think I will have time to do another update while I am there. I do plan on taking plenty of pictures though, so you can expect an update about that week-long trip sometime within the next 2 weeks or so. And, as mentioned earlier, I plan on doing an update with pictures from my trip to the aquarium and Minato Mirai. So lots of updates coming up. I hope you enjoyed this post, and keep checking back (at least in 2 weeks time)!

Minato Mirai, Hanami Party, Tokyo, Karaoke, so many things!

Life here has continued to be extremely busy, which is why this update is coming kind of late and will have a lot of content. Since posting last I have traveled and done many things, I will try to present them to you in the most organized fashion possible. Let's get on with the pictures. This took an extremely long time to do, so please enjoy aAs always, you can click on the picture to see the original size of it, which is much larger.

When I last posted, I promised to show you Minato Mirai, which I had just visited. It's this port area in Yokohama that's a touristy attraction. They have this gigantic ferris wheel and the largest building in Japan, both of which you can see here. We went to this one viewing area across the water, which has an amazing view of it.

We were also right next to a gigantic cruise ship.

Here's a closer up shot of the ferris wheel/landmark tower.



This is a video I took of Minato Mirai with my camera, so you can see all the pretty light shows that the ferris wheel creates.

Next thing on the list is the Hanami party our Japanese student buddies threw for us. A hanami party is where you go to a large park, set up a picnic, drink, and observe the tons of cherry blossoms. The park we went to was absolutely gigantic, what you see here is maybe 1/5th of the entire park. It was probably one of the most fun days we have had here.

Here is our picnic site, fully stocked with food, beer, and pretty blossom trees.

Here's me with a lot of the Japanese student buddies. The girl in the front and center is Mamiko, one of my awesome buddies.


And here's me with another one of my 3 buddies, Hiro. Hiro is one of the funniest and most awesome guys I will ever meet. And of course I had to sport my Pleepleus from Three Sheets t-shirt, what other shirt could be more appropriate for day drinking?

Group shot of almost everyone in the program as well as some of the buddies.


Very pretty cherry blossoms

Me and my awesome buddy Mamiko, who is much shorter than myself, which we have discussed many times.

Me and some of the other buddies (Mamiko is the only one which is "my buddy" but really, we all hang out with everyone's buddies). The guy in the middle is Atsu, who speaks close-to-perfect English and has an initially very surprising British accent. The girl who is not Mamiko is Ema, another awesome buddy. Really, the buddies are the most amazing people, this program is so much better because of them. The amount of stuff they do for us is ridiculous.

And now for my three favorite pictures of Hiro from that day. Nice drinking face. We taught him how to shotgun a beer that day and he loved it so much that he did it like five times, no joke.

Hiro never ceases to amaze.

Oh Hiro, what are you doing. This picture makes me laugh every time I look at it. This concludes the Hanami Party section of the post.

And now for my first trip to Tokyo. On our way to Shibuya, where they have that gigantic intersection known as "scramble crossing"

Tommy Lee Jones is one of the spokespeople for Boss Coffee in Japan. Cool

First view of Shibuya's scramble crossing while still in the train station.

Now actually down in the crossing. Going here for the first time is one of the most awe-inspiring things I have ever seen.


Me in front of the crossing

Of the many buildings with a screen built in

Wide view of scramble crossing, which is always super crowded.

Strange/amusing sign. What else can I say?

Some awesomely strange architecture with a Disney store at the bottom

Japan's Starbucks knock-off coffee shop with an awesome name. I actually see these pretty frequently.

Decided to try the Italian restaurant in Tokyo called "Italian Tomato." It was alright.

Walking the streets during the day.

Took a short train ride over to Harujuku, which is a major fashion district in Tokyo. Here is the main road, lined with all types of stores as well as tons of people.

Some more of Harujuku, now night time.

We then went back to Shibuya, wanted to see what it looks like at night. Here is the same crossing but with a lot of lights now.

Walking through the streets at night.

End of my trip to Tokyo, now on to some karaoke!

Decided to go karaoke'ing one night, here was our booth.

You know that I sang Rick Astley, video of it here

And here I will throw in a couple of random photos, mainly of me eating.

Group of us, including one buddy, eating out at a local restaurant.

In the dining room of the dorm. Our host people cooked yakisoba for us all and it was delicious.

Eating at another restaurant in Yokohama. The food here is quite delicious and almost always very cheap.

And for the last photo of this update, a group shot after we all went out to a place called Kappa Sushi. If you ever visit me here in Japan, I promise I will take you there, because it's amazing and ridiculously cheap.


Alright, well that finally does it for this update. This took many hours to complete, so I hope you enjoyed it. Like I said last time, I probably won't continue to be this thorough in all the updates because it takes so much time and work to do unfortunately. Thanks for reading and see you next time!