Or “How to enjoy a good afternoon near Tokyo”
Let’s try to play Tourist Guide here today.
This sunday we went to Kamakura, a town in the Kanagawa Prefecure (the same as yokohama), just a little to the west of Tokyo. Kamakura is known by the Great Buda,
and by having a great many number of temples, some of them with significant historic
importance.
In fact, Kamakura was one of the earlier Capitals of the Japanese empire, during the
(doh!) Kamakura period. During that time, buddhist sect had great importance in
japanese politics.
But that is about as far as my historical knowledge of kamakura goes. If you are a
japanese history buff - specially a pre-sengokuji historic buff, you probably will know
a lot more about the many obscures shrines in Kamakura, and can make a great historical
trip around the little town. But for the rest of us mortal, I’ll try to draw a short
tour that can be done in about an afternoon - in fact, the one I just did this sunday.
First, make sure that you pick a sunny day to visit Kamakura. You’ll do a lot of walking, and many of the places to visit are outside.
You can get to Kamakura by JR or by Odakyu. By JR you take the same line that you take to Yokohama, except that you go a little longer until you get to kita-kamakura, and then kamakura This route is faster, and by getting down at kamakura, you are in a good position to visit all the interesting places in one swoop.
If you go by odakyu, you are saving yourself up to 500 yens when compared to JR, and some walking, in exchange for 30 extra minutes in the train, both ways. You take the train in shinjuku, and go to Fujisawa, where you take the Enoden tram line. The edoden is a very local minor trainline which crosses through Kamakura and Enoshima, and some very cute cars. By taking the Free Pass campaign from either JR or Odakyu, you can ride freely on the enoden for a day.
Anyway, you want to start your journay in the north of Kamakura. The biggest temple in kamakura is the Fukuhachiman, which is just a little north from the Kamakura station. You go out from the east side, and then follow the big street north (away from the beach) - you’ll first go through a very charming street with lots of trees and a walkway in the middle.
Fukuhachiman seems to be always busy. We managed to go there on the “shichigosan” weekend, when shinto families go bless their child for long and healthy lives - so we got to see lots of small children wearing colorful - and cute - kimonos. There was a wedding going on for extra bonus. If you can ask someone when the shichigosan weekend is, and go there on that weekend, you get extra fun points from your trip.
I recommend seeing the big-buddha near sunset, so after you tire of fuku-hachiman, you have several options:
- you could go visit the infinite small shrines, chat up the priests, and try to learn some japanese history;
- you could go enjoy the very nice beach, and hear the sounds of the sea
- you could go try some of the light trails around the city
- all of the above
We did a mix of all the above this weekend. The hiking trails are really short and light, and hardly worth their names, but you can get some nice panoramas of the city from their tops. For those living in Tokyo, the beach is also quite a change from Tokyo’s blocky sealine.
When it’s around 4:30, you should head for the daibutsu, near hase station in the edoden line. The giant Bronze Buddha was build in the 13th century, and was originally inside a giantic temple which was washed away by a tsunami. The view in the sunset of the bronze statue is very nice. You can enter the budda by paying a symbolic fee of 20 yen - but nothing terribly interesting to see there.
It should be nearly night now (if not already), so the next step is Enoshima - a place not often mentioned in the guidebooks, but worth visiting. Enoshima is a small town neighbouring kamakura, with an island of the same name which is the town’s main feature. Enoshima’s island can be reached by Enoshima station from the enoden line.
The island has MANY straycats. For a cat lover like me that’s a big plus :-P. But seriously, enoshima has 2 main sights: The temple and the Lighthouse. To reach both, you have to go through many a set of stairs.
The temple is said to house a nude statue of a kami, a very unusual thing for shinto temples. Going there at night, I did not see it (probably inside one of the temple buildings), but even without that, the temple is quite beautiful at night.
The last stop in our trip is the lighthouse. By paying 500 to get there, it is probably the most expensive entrance ticket in the entire trip, but definately worth it. You can get to the top by stairs or elevator, and from there you can see all the neighbouring towns and quite a lot of ships and lighthouses.
They say you can watch mount fuji from that tower, but the night views is much better, and kinda romantic. (and seriously, is there ANYWHERE in Kanto where they DON’T say you can see mount fuji from?). Remember that after getting to the top by elevator, you can climb one more set of stairs to get to the REAL top.
Now just go back to Enoshima station to wrap up your trip at Fujisawa or Kamakura.
And feel free to leave questions below!
