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)!