Saturday, August 4, 2007

Kamakura

On Monday we headed off to Kamakura on our own, as Joanne had to go to work. It was a short train ride away, but such a difference from Tokyo—basically a small town. The first order of business was to visit the Daibutsu or Great Buddha; a 850 ton, 11.4 m tall bronze statue completed in 1252. Just as we arrived at the temple complex it began to rain. And I don’t mean one of those light showers we’ve had in Tokyo, or even the downpour we had on Sunday. I mean the heavens opened up—massive thunder, way to close lightening and so much rain that the building we were cowering in started to flood. It was really cool! We made a dash to the Buddha and paid the 20 yen (less than 20 cents!) to get into his belly. One of the coolest things we’ve seen yet.

It didn’t stop raining for a couple hours, but lightened up enough to get out and tour.
We then made our way to a huge temple perched on a hill. Here we saw beautiful gardens, shrines surrounded by thousands of small statues, a 30 foot tall golden Buddha and a cave shrine full of hundreds of tiny statues. After this temple we took a bus to a bamboo garden. It was amazing—some of the bamboo was ten inches in diameter! Unfortunately, we arrived only ten or fifteen minutes before it closed and all too soon a lady appeared to usher us out. Oh well, at least we got to see it.
a.



Daibutsu!



The rain cometh!!



Mini statues are for the souls of unborn children.



Bamboo Garden

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