Today I got an early start in order to get as many hours of daylight at Kamakura as possible. Which was a bad day to get up early as I had trouble sleeping last night and only slept for 3-or-so hours...
Arrived at around 10 and the first item on the agenda was to head over to the nearest department store and buy myself some kind of hat. The sun is not forgiving and I believe I would have literally fried my brain if I hadn't found something to put on my head.
After acquiring said hat I headed down to the southwest corner of the Kamakura region to where the great Buddha is. I thought it was going to be good starting from there and then making my way back in a rough half-circle towards the station over the day.
You could see the Buddha from the entrance, peeking up above the rooftops. It is a big Buddha, however after spending time in Cambodia watching the stone statues of the Khmer empire it felt almost a disappointingly small. Up close you can see that it is big, but again...
One thing with this one though - it is made of bronze and is actually hollow. Yup. You can go inside and that I did. Not much to see though. But something you probably should have done. This is a picture taken "up into the head". The head is that bumpy hole in the upper center...
The heat was pressing even at this early hour
(ok, it was almost 11 by the time I got here) and the humidity was even worse than in Tokyo. Ouch. So I took a slow stroll through the shaded garden behind the Buddha for a while.
After cooling off a little and drinking a lot of water I felt it was time to press on. Places to go! Sights to see! Ahoy adventurer! Ehm... Just outside the temple - which was closed, that's why I only took pictures of the Buddha - the was one of the better maps of the area. But not good enough as it was going to turn out...
Why is it that there are no "real" maps in Japan? Only these semi-correct playground thingies which lacks a lot of information? You have to know the place to use the map, and if you know the place what use is there of a map?
Anyway. My thought was to take the hiking trail for a while and break off from it to visit a couple of shrines and some temples
(that were hopefully going to be open). I headed in the direction the map had shown and at about the location where the trail was supposed to start there was...
A tunnel!? This was not on any of my maps!? But fear not! I found the trail just to the right of the tunnel.
A stairway heading up into the void. So I started to climb. And got to another set of stairs
(see how they disappear into the distance, loooong set of stairs).
And another one, and another one and... I'll spare you the pictures. It was a lot of stairs. Some was partially overgrown with bushes and I started to wonder if this was really the right way and the right trail... But then I reached the top of all the stairs.
To this side a great view. And to the other...
A locked gate... Doh! Obviously the wrong way. I cursed a little
(read: a lot), sat down a couple of minutes to catch my breath - it took a lot of energy making my way up there in this heat. I was soaking wet. And then heading down again. Stairs heading down are a killer... Especially if they are not smooth and the steps are of different size and angles. On my way down I saw a side-path taking off into the bushes. That was probably the path I should have taken, but I was in no mood to try right then. So I went all the way back into the civilized part of the area and started to work my way back to the trail from a different angle. The map had shown another entry-path as well.
Now this trail was more like a trail and less like an endless set of stairs. Still heading up-hill though, so no easy on the legs. Good cardio, I probably needed it. ;-)
It was a tranquil path. Felt more like being in a jungle than near a city. The sounds shifted, nature took over. And then I hit a crossroad.
...and as you know my Japanese is non-existent so I had no clue as to where the paths led and which to take. So I took this one instead:
Partially just because it was pointing down a really steep slope and partially because I saw some flags and a rooftop down there that looked like they belonged to a temple or shrine. After making my way down I looked back up again.
...and said to myself - there is no way I'm making it up again without a serious rest and something to eat. The energy was starting to drain from my system. But yes, there was a shrine down here.
And after having spend a loooong time in the shade trying to cool off and gulping down almost all water I had left in my bag I saw that yes:
there was an easier access path to this shrine than the one I came. Thank you! I headed out that way and carried on in my search for sights. I was almost giving up on temples for today anyway, the nature was rewarding enough as it was. The tranquility, the sounds of the animals, the butterflies! There were pitch-black big butterflies in the woods! Beautiful! They were never still so I didn't manage to get any photos of them, but wow!
But yes, I found another shrine on my way back to the trail
(guess what - up a steep hill of course!). This one had an entrance through the rock.
And for the first time of today there was a gentle breeze cooling me as I walked through the tunnel and into the garden of the shrine.
This shrine had a little pond with carp fish and a cool BIG spider sitting in a net over one corner of the pond. As I left the shrine
(they had a small shop at the shrine so I filled up my water supply and ate a bag of cashews) I found my way back to the trail.
Gentler paths to walk now, but still up up up. At the top I found the statue of Minamoto Yoritomo.
It was surrounded by an open garden at which this sign was posted:
I'm not sure here... But I guess I'm not supposed to throw cans at cats because then the trees will be sad?
And from here I, of course, took a wrong turn and headed down the back-road of the trail instead of the main trail... How do I end up doing this all the time? Not that it really mattered, I still got to see a lot of nice scenery, got an interesting walk and saw places that you otherwise don't see.
Like this graveyard in the middle of the forest.
The entry from this direction was closed and barb-wired so I couldn't enter. I circled this graveyard for quite some time, on really bad trails. Got to see a dragonfly sitting all still for long enough to take a picture of it though.
Not every day that you get to do that. Dragonflies are strange creatures...
Anyway. As I said, the slopes down from here were winding and narrow and tricky.
This passageway was no wider than 40cm, sloping downwards, the stone surface covered with a mushy moss and no hand-rails... Adventure! ;-)
But damn that adventure... A little later I twisted my right ankle again. Not as bad as before, but it sure as hell hurt and I'm still a bit sore. Dammit! That really slowed me down.
At the end of this trail was a temple
(of course there was an easy way of reaching it as well).
But it turned out to be closed.
So was the other two temples I managed to find on my way back to the station as well. I guess this was not the right day for temple-seeing in Kamakura. But I still got a lot of impressions and saw some fantastic sights. I feel at home in the closeness of the forest. It's comforting.
I made my way back to the station through the back of Kamakura. And I saw this at many places:
What? A roll of toilet paper sitting in the opening of an entrance to a house/garden. What is that all about? "We have a toilet"? Hm.
And I found some electrical wiring to immortalize as well:
Yup. It's been patched with tape there... This was not the only lamp-post with this kind of patching going on. Home-made way of getting cheap electricity? Or official patching?
I was knackered as I came back to the station. The heat and the physical strain of the trail
(after not having been able to work out for a month!) in combination with perhaps a liiiitle too little energy in-take left me with only one option - heading back to Shinjuku. And that I did. I fell asleep on the train, woke up one stop before Shinjuku. I headed straight for the hotel and the shower! And then fell a asleep again for a couple of hours and now it's halft past eight and time to find food - my stomach is roaring...
