Friday Oct 17, 2008 Shrines and Temples in Kamakura

Hi all
Sorry these blog updates are loooooooong over due. Jean and I have been very busy and seeing lots of stuff here in Japan. We are walking a ton and enjoying absolutely beautiful indian summer fall weather. Hum..I wonder if they call it that here or if they have a different name for beautiful warm fall days?
On Friday Jean and I took the train down to Kamakura south of here about 20 minutes. When we got to Kamakura we transferred to an electric train that took us a bit further to Hase and there we walked down to the Yugihama Beach on Sagami Bay and had a little picnic lunch while we watched some kids on a field trip playing in the water. The beach looked very different from July in the heat of the summer when it was packed with people and multi colored umbrellas, restaurants...
There were a few different preschool groups there and then some kids from high school walked by and were looking at a dead ray ?(bat or sting) of some sort with me. A few people were sunbathing there faces only as they sat up against the stone wall,while a few fisherman were working on their nets and another one had several trays of sardines drying in the sunlight.
We then made our way to check out a few of the different Shinto Shrines and Buddhist Temples in the city. There are over 30 some there I believe and we made it to just 6
of them. We passed a few little ones near the beach and a cemetary before we went to the Hasedera Temple. This temple is best known for its statue of Kannon "the goddess of mercy". No Photos allowed. We saw many little stones figures all over the grounds and people were lighting candles, bying bouquersts of flowers, writing wishes on rocks, and wood tablets .... We did see some very tired, but happy elderly pilgrims arriving in their white outfits. There is a pilgrimage route that takes people to over 80 different sites throughout Japan and they wear all white clothes while walking along the path. We walked past a bamboo grove and then climbed up some steep steps for a view of the coast and Kamakura shoreline.
After leaving this temple and on our way to the Great Buddha, we stopped to have a baked rice cracker dipped in soy sauce, but this time no tea was given with it.
The BIG Buddha was very crowded with many school kids there on field trip. Lots of buisness men and toursits as well. It was fun just to sit and watch the children. One guy we asked to take our photo thought I was danish by my size and with my yellow shirt on.
We then got on the bus and rode to the center of town to see the BIG Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shinto Shrine.It surprised me to see all the leaves had already fallen off the cherry trees that line the long boulevard. When we entered under the large red tori gates and walked up over the arched red bridges we found the two ponds were all empty of plants and only had men at work pulling out the last of the lotus roots and putting the roots into the boats they were pulling behind them. It was a very different site than the big lushious green plants with pink lotus blossoms CJ and I saw in July.
We made our way back to the train station and headed back to Yokohama. It was a very warm day and we were pretty tired out by the time we got back home.