Kamakura Buddha

Kamakura is located just outside of Tokyo on the seashore and one of the "must-do" trips around the city. Kamakura itself used to be Japan`s capital for a brief period of 150 years in the 12th to 14th Century. These days Kamakura is renowned for its many temples that make it being called little Kyoto by some. And the Daibutsu, the large Buddha statue, although not quite as big as the one in Nara, is a famous object of pictures.
I went to Kamakura with a friend from Okinawa who came to visit his parents in Saitama prefecture. So I could combine a day of sightseeing with a day of Japanese speaking practise. And it went very well and added to the feeling that lately my Japanese is becoming quite functional. I don`t need to consult my dictionary every couple of minutes and I can express myself fluently in most situations. And my friend Yuuki speaks a lot, so this was definitely a good challenge.
We set off from Ikebukuro in the morning and it took us about one hour to get to Kamakura. There is an old tram that links the different sites and goes down to the seashore as well, so we bought a "Norihodai" ticket - "all-you-can-ride" ("hodai" in Japanese means "all-you-can", so it`s used in a variety of package offers like "Nomihodai" ->drink "Tabihodai" -> eat and so on). I found the expression quite funny as "all-you-can-ride" was a new term to me and sounds a bit silly. Anyway, the tram prevented us from getting too wet as it was raining quite a bit unfortunately.
The large Buddha figure in Kamakura was of course well visited. You could enter it as well, but I doubted that there would be any worthwhile view up there considering the weather and paying money to enter a narrow damp stone Buddha, I did not consider that again (see post on visit to Kurume last year...). The seemingly aslepp Buddha figure with the pouty mouth looked impressive though. Yuuki said the its hair looks like salmon roe - the kind of remark that as a culturally sensitive foreigner you are trying not to make usually ;-) We also visited some temples nearby and a little cave with statues of Shinto Gods. After paying reference to the cultural aspect of the cave we could however not resist playing "Caveman" in there as well...
For lunch we stopped at a restaurant that is obviously a must-visit too and famous for its super fresh sashimi and shirasu. I definitely was in for the fresh sashimi, but did not know what shirasu is. Turned out to be tiny, almost transparent raw fish. One Japanese friend later told me she can not eat it fresh, only dried because of all the tiny little eyes of the fish looking at you. It was not bad though I slightly prefered the delicious sashimi.
In the afternoon the weather cleared up a bit and we visited Enoshima, a little island linked with the mainland by a bridge. There are some famous temples on there as well, so we took a walk over the island. For the lazy folks there are escalators to climb the islands hills if you are ready to pay 500 Yen for the luxury. We did not of course. The island was also full of cats, they were virtually everywhere - from the expensive Siamese to street breeds. We had another couple of bites of seafood on top of the hill, more shirasu and grilled marinated squid, yum!
Before going back to Tokyo we lazied around the seashore in Fujisawa for a bit. Yuuki wanted some French fries and we had to eat them outside because he also wanted to smoke absolutely. There were warning signs on the beach saying you should NOT eat outside because of all the birds (whatever they are, crows maybe?) that would attack you if you had food. I am seriously scared of big black birds, have been for a long time (no, I haven`t seen "The Birds" though read the book). So I was veeery nervous and the birds circling above our heads were not encouraging at all, not the situation to enjoy the actually very pretty sunset. Yuuki hid the package of fries under the table and once in a while stuffed a bunch into his mouth. Was quite funny, but I still had the vision of the birds attacking...
P.S.: I had to correct several spelling errors before posting. I wrote "Karmakura" instead of Kamakura. Maybe that should be the real name, good karma place it seems for sure...