Five Hours in Kamakura

Kamakura is a small town of 170,000 people that was capital of Japan from 1185 to 1333.  It is a town of temples in beautiful, hilly, forested landscapes.  The trees are tall evergreens like we have in British Columbia.  The difference between B.C. and this place is that there are 750 year-old temples scattered within the forested lands.

To get to Kamakura I took the JR Yamanote Line from Ueno Station to Shinagawa Station.  From there I switched to the JR Yokosuka Line and got off at Kita-Kamakura Station.  The train ride took about an hour.

You can see the path I followed on the map below.  In all I walked about 9 kilometres or so.

My first stop was Engaku-ji.  I found a couple of paths that nobody seemed to follow.  One on the left side led up the side of the hill and offered great views of the temple.  The other, on the right, led up to a cemetery.  They are not marked on the maps and so they are not visited by the hordes.  Nice!



After visiting the Engaku-ji I paid a visit to Tokei-ji.  This particular temple has an amazing cemetery.  The temple itself is not much.  The cemetery goes up the small valley the temple is built on.  The day I was there a ceremony was being for a group of people who I assume were celebrating someone's life.  There were monks chanting and you could here their chant throughout the small valley.  The smell of the incense was calming.



Next was the Daibutsu Hiking Course.  The trail head is on the road to the right of the Jochi-ji temple (which I did not visit).  The trail-head is obvious but the trail itself is not that well marked in certain areas.   The signposts that are on the trail are in Japanese (of course!) and so were not much help to me.  I kinda, sorta got spun my wheels a bit in the Genjiyama-koen park area and I think I missed the trail.  So I ended up on the road all the way to Zeniarai-benten.  The good news is that the roads in Kamakura include signage for walkers.

Zeniarai-benten is a Shinto Inari Shrine.  These are dedicated to the god of rice and are protected by foxes (well statues of foxes).  They are also identifiable by the many Torii gates that mark their entrances, unlike regular Shinto shrines that have one Torii at their entrances.  This particular one has the added cool feature that you need to walk through this tunnel dug into the mountain side rock to get to the clearing behind where it is situated.



I stuck to the road this time and made my way to Sauke-inari-jinja.  Another inari shrine.  This one is marked with a bunch of red torii over steps leading up to the shrine.  There are a bunch of smaller shrines in the area with small white foxes guarding the deities.  The trail-head for Daibutsu is again not that well marked.  I went up this badly maintained steep mud trail (it did have metal handrails and chains here and there to help) but I again think I missed the trail as I ended up on a road again!



To Daibutsu.  This is the second largest Buddha statue in Japan (the biggest is in Nara).  It is beautiful and so big that you can enter it from its left side (for an extra 20 yen).  Inside I put my hand on the bronze and it was quite warm, conducting the heat of the sun outside.  I had an ice cream cone as I was starving by this point (300 yen).



Back to Kamakura.....see the map for where I ate.

On my way home I hopped on the wrong train.  At first all was fine but it obviously diverged from the line I came on at some point.  The good news is that it crossed my familiar Yamanote Line at Osaki....phew!
Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Comments

windi said…
Hi! I read your article and I really want to go there like you!
Please keep share your adventures in Japan. I'd like to go there but it seems impossible for me now.
June 26, 2010 at 6:17 AM
Olivier said…
Hello windi,

I hope you get the chance to visit Japan. It truly is an amazing place to see. I hope to go back again someday soon.
June 26, 2010 at 4:20 PM
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