A Day of Travel

What a busy day we had today! We started the day at 6AM by going for a walk around the hotel. We stumbled upon a Shinto temple which was very interesting. We came back and had breakfast at 7 and then went out again at 9 to start our new adventure. We took the train from our station, but our guide had purchased an additional ticket for us so we could ride on the top deck of a double-decker train car. We could see into people's yard once we got out of the city. This was a very comfortable and less crowded way to travel. When we got to Ofuna, we got on a monorail which was great for views of the surrounding area. We got off in Enoshima and then took a local train to Hase. Here we visited the Hase Temple with its gilt statue of Kannon and then walked around the beautiful gardens (one of which is pictured above. We then walked to the Great Buddha (see other photo). Absolutely stunning in size. At one time it was gilt, but that was many years ago. Along the way we saw groups of school children out for field trips to visit the temples. One group that we passed was from a private girls' school and their uniforms were navy blue sailor outfits and each of them had a bright yellow backpack on her back. Very cute! It reminded me of the childrens' story Madeline. We went for lunch at a local restaurant. We each had a bento box which is a highly lacquered box with compartments for different types of food. I know I won't remember them all, but there was a bowl of chicken broth with tofu, a bowl of rice, a small salad, salmon, pickled vegetables, a sweet potato ball with chicken, sesame covered mushrooms, and a coffee flan for dessert. All of the portions are small, but there was certainly plenty to eat. After lunch, we took a short train ride to Kamakura to visit a Shinto shrine (the earlier shrines were Buddhist). The train rided was interesting as it went along the Sagami Bay. There were many surfers out waiting for the big wave. The long walking road to the shrine was lined on both sides with cherry trees. Since it is fall here also, the leaves had turned yellow and a light orange. It was lovely, but I can imagine that the view is stunning in the spring when the cherry blossoms are out. The shrine itself was up a long flight of stairs and looked quite lovely with the red paint of the shrine against the green of the surrounding hill. We walked back toward the train station, but took a parallel street to the one we had walked down. This was the local shopping street: clothing stores, restaurants, souvenir shops, etc. We poked our heads in a few places before heading back to the station. We took the train back to the hotel and dropped our packs off before heading out to dinner which was on our own tonight. Lana, John, Kelly and the two of us decided on a restaurant not too far from the hotel. The dinners were good, but strangely, the meals did not come to the table all at once. In fact, Lana and I got our dinners after everyone else had finished - very strange (the cook may have forgotten our order). At any rate, the food was good and now we are ready to relax before bed. Tomorrow we are going to the famous Tokyo fish market so I will let you know how it was.