Kamakura

I wrote this for one of my classes, thought it would fit on here as well!

We visited Kamakura on a nice Sunday. This is an area near Tokyo where they have accumulated a big number of shrines. The day started out with us all gathering at Machida station.

On arriving at kamakura we were greeted by our guides for the day. They were very friendly and properly guided us through the entire day. The first thing we witnessed was what seemed a simple road. But the road was build by the shogun to pray for the safe delivery of his first son. The road is special because it is very wide at the end and small at the beginning. This makes it possible to see down the entire road without much trouble.

At the beginning of the road, here is a huge Shinto temple. At this temple we purified ourselves and saw a 1000 year old tree that unfortunately fell over about a month before we got there. Still the temple itself was impressive especially the approach. It sits up top of a hill which makes it look even bigger than it is.

After seeing this nice temple we went to see 大仏(DaiButsu, Big Buddha), which really is big. This really impressed me especially after realizing that there used to be a temple surrounding him which got destroyed in a tsunami. We got to enter him and see how they constructed this big Buddha. With the help of a wooden frame they were able to make this big bronze Buddha in the 13th century.

After that we went on to see the Hase Dera, which is a very nice looking temple.  With a nice cave with a lot Buddhist gods which all stood for things like doing well in love and financial fortune.

Random Observation; In Japan it is either dry, or it rains all day