I, along with my good buddies Nonchan and Maisan, made my way to Kamakura on Saturday. It is Maisan’s home town, and I truly think that she is one of the luckiest people in Japan for this. I’ll cover the sightseeing in a minute, but first I want to mention the amazing beach and restaurant that we went to. We made it to the beach around sunset, and the water was glowing from the setting sun. There were dozens of wind surfers, and it was the first time I’d actually seen anyone windsurf. Kamakura felt nothing like Japan, and it reminded me a great deal of California.

The sea air was relaxed, and so were the people. We went to a small hemp café for dinner. I’d never heard of hemp used in food before, obvious brownie joke aside, but it really wasn’t something that I was eager to try. To me, it was as if someone was asking “would you like me to put this smelly rope into your coffee?” I wasn’t too keen on the idea, and that’ll be the only time in my life that I type the word “keen.” I had taco rice, with a brown sugar and lemon rum drink, followed by an iced ginger-with-lemon cappuccino. It was all pretty much amazing. Maisan was still hungry, so we ordered come cheese fries. I had no idea that these fries were also covered with anchovy paste, until I had eaten a few and noticed the rich flavour. This is coming from someone who is now pretty much immune to the horror of eating something new and strange, but anchovies are truly underrated in America. In the case of cheese they serve as a flavour enhancer, in effect making the cheese more “cheesy.” People may notice if they were to eat a whole anchovy, but if it’s mixed with something I would bet that most couldn’t guess what it was. It’s amazing how so many people find putting a wad of overly processed and chemically laden beef in their mouth pleasurable, but they just can’t manage the fresh fish. I can understand an aversion to eating things with eyes though; in fact, I think Jim Gaffagin said it best. 3:57
So now, to the actual Japanese culture. We went to an amazing bamboo forest, and I couldn’t help but think of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Yup I know it’s Chinese). We had traditional Japanese tea at a little tea house in the middle of the forest, which was awesome! I think the best thing as a whole about Kamakura is that it wasn’t touristy in any way. Fuji was a tourist trap, but Kamakura maintained its epic sites and beaches without blatant attempts to separate you from your money or sell you a crappy keychain.

The giant Buddha was amazing; unfortunately, we couldn’t go inside because it was closed for the day. I always assumed that this Buddha was made recently, but it is several hundred years old, and much older than America (but what isn’t).

We also went to a temple/shrine, but no one seemed to be able to really explain which one it was. In most cases, a shrine is reflective of the Shinto religion, paying tribute to a God or deity, and a temple is reflective of the Buddhist religion, housing no specific God, but this Buddhist temple seemed to contain many attributes of a shrine. There was an amazing gold Buddha, but as with most places like this no pictures were allowed. Most of the Buddha were modelled after the Indian interpretation of Buddha, more skinny and with a different hairdo. They had an excellent museum, containing likenesses of many people who had gained the third eye. The eyes on the statues were incredibly real, as were the sculptures themselves. In some cases it appeared as if the third eye was just emerging from the forehead, with skin stretched and distorted. The detail was scary in some instances.

The day was amazing, and I was exhausted by the end of it. We were fuelled by famous soba, which contained tons of vegetables and a type of fish jelly, which was actually quite good. We also had plenty of sweets and ice cream. It was another great trip in Japan, and with only two weeks left, I’m trying to cram in as many as possible.

























