Sights around Kamakura

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Jan and I spent all day Wednesday at Kamakura, a town just over an hour by train outside of Tokyo. It's a rural community, which was refreshing after being surrounded by cityscape each day so far. Eric and Aleks also went, with full video camera equipment. I expect we'll see some footage in the upcoming DVD.

Kamakura is known for two things: its Zen temples and the "Big Budda." Each temple is thematic, with this one being known as a safe haven for battered women. We thought this a very progressive idea, given the culture. It also gave the women an option for divorce, provided they stayed within the temple walls for three years.

This was the temple devoted to the memory of dead babies. It sounds like a sad place, but actually it was quite beautiful. The view here was incredible, overlooking the town and a bay. That's Eric taking video in the picture.

It's kind of fun to poke around in the graveyards too. They are built above ground, just holding the ashes. Many were well tended, with flowers and burning incense.

Even though it was December, there was still a lot of bright color.

Here is a very tall forest of bamboo.

We went on the Daitotsu hiking course between one temple district and the Big Buddha area. It said hiking, and it really was. But it was also one of the highlights of our trek.

We carried the video bag, tripod, and wheelie cart through the forest trail, up and down a dirt path. The steep areas were nearly always steps created by tree roots. And we met a lot of people also hiking the trail, stopping for a quick rest with us and exchanging greetings.

As we neared the end of the trail, we met up with a Kindergarten class on an outing. They were so cute, we couldn't resist talking to them. Jan was wearing a shirt with the M&M characters, all dressed up for Christmas. One little boy pointed to Jan and called out "Apple!" Another chimed in with "Banana!"

Soon the children were all crowded around, talking and pointing. The teacher spoke enough English that we could laugh together that the children mistook the candies for fruit.

It was a perfect opportunity for Jan to learn how to count to five in Japanese. The children were energetic teachers.

Then we went on to see Big Buddha. There we talked to a group on an outing from the local US military base. They were recently stationed there, and had a week to see the sights and get a feel for the Japanese culture. We traded turns taking pictures for each other in front of Big Buddha.