Trains in Real Life

Today is Foundation Day. I don't know what that means except that it is a day off from school and work. I spent most of today is a bleary eyed state recuperating from my extended day yesterday. As much as I love and appreciate the train system in Japan, it has one major flaw. It doesn't run trains past midnight.

I spent the day in Kamakura which is a small, pretty, coastal city south of Tokyo. It is famous for a large statue of Buddha, a shrine for washing money, and sweet potato ice cream. I was able to enjoy all of those highlights in addition to going for an hour long hike in the woods, antique shopping, and a delicious taco lunch.

I traveled with Leslie to Kamakura. Since Buddha was an important must-see on both of our lists we went there straight away. It's an impressive statue. It's in open air, serene, and surrounded by sculpted views. We paid twenty yen and were able to go inside the Buddha. There wasn't much to see, but it felt oddly metaphysical.

After the Buddha, we went to find the money washing shrine. Kamakura is a tourist town and there were bilingual maps and signs every two blocks. Still, we managed to take the long way round and get a little lost in the process. Instead of taking a bus, or going directly along the main road, we ended up hiking up a mountain to get to the shrine. It took an hour and the trail was deeply muddy from the previous day's snowfall, but we managed.

It was worth it. The shrine was accessible through a small tunnel in the mountain. At the end of the dark tunnel were a series of pale wood torii glowing with sunlight. We passed through incense burners and prayer candle holders to a cave with a natural spring. Hanging from the roof of the cave were thousands of paper cranes that school children had made to increase the good luck of the site. Good luck was essential to the shrine. Popular belief says that if you wash your money at the spring then it will return doubly to you. I washed various coins and bills from my wallet. Hopefully, I will soon be twice as rich.

After visiting that shrine (and with our guarantee of future wealth) we headed back into town for some shopping. I went to an antique store and bought an awesome compass. It is small, metal, and has kanji on the face. I like it a lot. We also found a place that sold sweet potato ice cream--a local specialty food. It was purple and surprisingly delicious.

After that, we boarded a train to Yokohama, the second largest city in Japan and a de-facto part of Tokyo to meet with Aaron and Clarissa. It took forever to locate them in the city-like train station. We wandered down hallways for 20 minutes, passed restaurants, jewelry stores, clothing stores, grocery stores, and were given free samples of cakes and wine before we ran into each other. We decided to get dinner at a close place since we knew we needed to be careful with the train times if we wanted to get back in time. We found a barbecue restaurant near the train station that was spectacular. We order plate after plate of raw beef and vegetables that we cooked ourselves on the grill in the middle of our table. Oishii!

Unfortunately, the leisurely meal made us take a later train. And since trains in Japan don't run past midnight we became stranded in Tatebayashi, a good thirty minute train ride from Ota. We considered our options: a hundred dollar taxi ride, an all-nighter, or an expensive hotel room. Lucky for us, JET connections came in useful, and I remembered that Leslie and I knew a fellow ALT who lived in Tatebayashi. Despite calling at midnight asking for a place to sleep for four people, she didn't hesitate and graciously let us crash at her apartment for the night.

Pictures of Kamakura are linked in the sidebar.