Church on a hill....

Welcome Ninja fans!

Sunday the 27th saw Karate and I embarking on an adventure to Kamakura. The day also happened to be one of the 'warm' ones too (apologies to those fans in Perth, Karratha etc that are currently copping it! Needless to say it was shorts and t-shirt weather woohoo!

The city is located about 40min (in an express train) from Shinagawa and is just south of Yokohama. The town itself is very spaced out and doesn't have the same population density that most of the cities have and seems to be the equivalent of a bunbury/mandurah in WA terms.

Kamakura was actually the capital of Japan way way way back around 1180 during the Kamakura Shogunate but its real claim to fame appears to be the number of temples and shrines around the place. The first 50m from the train station took about 40min as there were 3 shrines/temples that close -- it was looking to be a long day!.

Tenchu, anyone?

Given the distance we still had to cover Kate and I decided to keep the days viewing to just the 'must see' locations to 3-4.

In addition to some of the amazing buildings we were also pretty lucky to see some cherry blossoms starting to emerge. Not quite in the colours or numbers that we expect in the next month or 2, but still very pretty. It also game me a chance to start tinkering with macro photo's!

Unfortunately I wont be uploading many of the photo's as there are just too many! (and I find that trying to get the layout right in blogpsot quite frustrating at times).

For more of the photo's head to Kate's facebook page..... If you are not friends with her and cannot see them, well you should be!

Steve didn't quite get he was a fish

The second 'must see' temple we went to, was once again reached after climbing a 'few' steps (it was a common theme for the day -- fantastic training for the ski trip next weekend!) and after reaching the summit we decided that a spot of lunch was in order.

It seemed fortuitous that there were some vendors nearby selling a variety of foods. The one that smelt the best looked to be a sesame/garlic chicken on a bed of cabbage. The first piece was a bit Kate got was nothing but skin, the first piece I got was skin.......This didnt bode well at all, turns out we bought a heap of chicken skin..... oh well! (and no we didnt eat it!)

We next headed to a big buddha. I'd like to say we thought that we would kill the second bird with the one stone and finish the rest of our ski training whilst catching the last shrine. I'd like to say that, but I would be telling big porky's.

Turns out there was quite a lot of the pic to the left. Lots of up and down, left and right, up and down. We weren't quite as hardcore as the locales who seemed to be running the circuit..... for fun.......madness!

Still for the unprepared it was a sod and we were both sweaty smelly and generally over it by the time we got to the statue.

Kate, less than impressed when I suggested she
might also get lucky if she rubbed my belly
instead of Buddha's

Once again, please see Kate's facebook page for more pics of the shrine at the end of the cross country course.

After the relative serenity of the shrines we thought we would go to the beach, another thing that Kamakura is popular for. I will try not to be a WA snob when it comes to beaches....... who am I kidding. I will acknowledge it is winter and the wind was howling but I was less than impressed with both the beach and the surf. I was impressed with how keen some locals were to go surfing.........(I shudder to think what happens when it catches a crosswind!).


Needless to say we enjoyed a relaxing train ride home and enjoyed an early night as a result of the days adventure!

There have been some requests for pics of some more of the interesting vending machines. I will see what I can do from now on, though I would have to say the coolest one I have seen so far (excluding the beer ones) vended Lego figurines.

In any case stay tuned!