Kamakura day trip (Saturday)

On Saturday we went to Kamakura! It was about an hour and a half south of Tokyo. We traveled through Yokohama, which I hope to visit, and an industrial park in the south of Tokyo, which actually looked pretty dirty compared to the rest of Tokyo. Strange to see, isn't it?

The first temple we visited was Engakuji Temple.The temples had such beautiful architecture and natural scenery. I would have liked to live there if it weren't for the bugs, which nature tends to have. 

 There were monks in this building practicing with bows and arrows! I was extremely impressed with their elegance.

This is just the entrance gate!

There were flowers everywhere! Here is Laura, feeling genki with the flowers.

 

Some of the trees were 1,000 years old, we were told. Maybe not this one but it sure looked cool. :)

Here are the two places I wanted to live: 

I bet they are full of tatami mats!! I love those things. :D

Then we saw Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine.

Inside a beautiful structure in front of the temple, there was a traditional Japanese wedding ceremony going on! Many people were watching and taking pictures.

Here is the entrance to the temple. I loved the colorful banners in the breeze.

These look like prettier-than-average Christmas trees, don't they? But they are not Christmas trees at all.

More really cool old trees! 

A Japanese not-squirrel! There was a Japanese-American near us who explained that it's not a squirrel but she didn't know what it was... I knew she spoke English because she saw it and said, "O. M. G!" ;) She was from Houston.

This building is neat to me because it has the rope and lightning-paper which means it's a sacred place. 

Next to the temple was an enormous lily pond. I got obsessed with the flowers and fish. 

After lunch Ethan and I got lunch on the main street near the temple. We had a difficult time getting cold noodles because I forgot that soba and udon are not the same dish, haha. It was sooooooo hot outside and I felt like if I ate hot noodles with broth, I would die from sweating too much. So when I said, "Cold soba please" even though I wanted udon, they were like, "No good, no good!" Eventually I got some help from the Japanese host families who came on our trip with us. They got me some cold udon noodles. :D For dessert, we had ice cream. The area is famous for its sweet potato ice cream, which is purple! If you look closely, you can see that we both have purple ice cream. It was really delicious.

Then we went to see the Big/Great Buddha, also known as the Daibutsu. The Great Buddha was really amazing! I knew it was going to be big but I didn't think it would be THAT big. :) I didn't know how high 13.35 meters really was.

For 20 yen, they let us go inside! It was like a small house in there; I hadn't realized it would be hollow. Neat!

Hasedera was a temple surrounded by beautiful, flower-covered grounds, our last stop for the day. Our info sheet says it's one of the oldest temples in Kamakura.

The Japanese tourist really loved this sculpture, maybe because it was so cute.

Namiko, Takumi, and I went into a cave that was part of the temple grounds. Inside it were many statues built into the rock, as well as a small area that was full of three-inch-high Buddha statues. Some places were so tiny that I had to almost crawl!

Inside one of the main temples.

We walked up the mountain stairs to see the flowers and the great view. Along the way we saw this cool statue. It reminded me of Hinduism, although I think it's Buddhist.

I LOVE FLOWERS! They were everywhere, so cool. Here are a bunch of my pictures, also of the view from the mountainside.

 

On the way home, we saw these neat people having fun on the beach. :D

On the bus we watched the first half of Princess Mononoke and I reaaaaaally want to see the ending!