We decided to try out the rail passes with a day trip out of Tokyo. Here's Ben on the train.
It's hard to remember that Japanese writing is actually words. I was irritated one time because a convenience store had stocked the cough drops right next to candy in almost identical packaging, and said, "Why would they do that??" Ben pointed out, "Well, most people here can read what it says on the package." Oh right.
Kamakura is about an hour outside of Tokyo on the train. It's most famous for the Daibutsu, the second largest Buddha in Japan. We got there just after the opening time at 9:00am. It was deserted.
At all the temple sites, they have these fountains with cups for you to wash your hands before entering. I'm sure there's an official name for them and a better explanation, but you know.
It's a big Buddha! It dates from 1252.
Originally the Daibutsu sat inside a large temple, but the temple was washed away in a tsunami in 1498. There are tsunami warning signs all over Kamakura, which is a bit unsettling.
We didn't intentionally arrive just after opening but it was a nice coincidence. Even fifteen minutes later there were quite a few people milling around.
The town of Kamakura is full of other temples and shrines. We picked one that was more or less on the way back toward the train station, Hasedera. Here, like most of the temples we visited, there is a walking path through gardens and other small structures before you get to the main temple.
It goes without saying that it was very beautiful and peaceful.
One interesting thing we noticed is that many of the flowers and plants in Japan are identical to what we have in our yard. Harriet planted plenty of these crocuses, for example. We discovered Raleigh & Tokyo are at almost exactly the same latitude, so it makes sense, I guess, that the climate would support similar plant life. The heat and humidity are certainly the same.
The temple at the top was very nice. Like most places, no pictures allowed inside.
As we were leaving, two Japanese schoolgirls approached us and asked if they could ask some questions to practice their English. Of course! Each time after we answered, they both stared at us silently for a few seconds while their brains processed the responses, then would nudge each other and whisper about what we'd said and who should go next. It was adorable and hilarious. They asked for a picture at the end, I assume to prove to their teacher they did in fact talk to strangers, so I asked if we could have a picture too. It turns out this is very common - we had two more groups of kids ask us questions in other cities. These two were the best, though.
We walked to the very top of the hill to see the city. It's obvious from here why tsunamis would be a problem.
I believe this is the office/administration building for the temple area. There were some people having meetings in there.
We got back on the train and went to Hakone, a hot springs mountain town near Tokyo. On clear days you can see Mt. Fuji from some parts of the area, but we didn't catch a glimpse. We also had no real plan when we got off the train here, which created a bit of an adventure.
First we got lunch, though. Ben got the sashimi set, which was lovely.
I got the udon set with tempura. It would have been fine, except for that front and center bowl of ... something. I found out later it's grated yam, a staple of their cuisine. I try hard to be adventurous and eat what I'm given without complaint, but on this day I learned I'm a hard no on grated yam. The flavor is similar to miso (maybe they put miso in it?) but it's basically cold gooey slime. No bueno. I tried!
There's a ton of stuff to see and do in Hakone but it's all quite spread out, and since we didn't have a car we had to rely on public transit. There are trains and buses and boats and a cable car (which was closed for volcanic activity!) - but the bus seemed easiest. We decided to go to the Hakone Open Air Museum, an outdoor sculpture park.
Unfortunately, there was not really any readily available information about the bus. There was a bus stop, and we deduced that we should go in the opposite direction from the train station, so at least we knew that much. An English girl was standing there who told us she was going to hike up a mountain that looked on the map to be a little bit past the Open Air Museum, so we thought it was a good plan to get on the same bus and you know, just get off when it seemed right.
So we got on the bus, which was standing-room-only packed, and immediately had no idea what to do - how do we pay, etc? The driver shoved a pamphlet into Ben's hands called "HOW TO RIDE THE BUS" and set off careening up the mountain on insanely winding roads, throwing everyone into each other and the sides of the bus every few seconds. It was hilarious, but also we had no idea where we were even going. I tried to read the pamphlet in the midst of this chaos, but it took me at least eight stops to even find our starting and desired end points on the map, at which point I also realized we were definitely not on the right bus. We were going to have to get off and transfer. The English girl also realized this about the same time and tapped me on the shoulder to let me know, which was nice. Ben was pretty stressed out so I didn't tell him. I only told him we were getting off in two more stops.
We got off here.
Fortunately it was a real bus station with a man working inside. I went in and asked him what we should do, and to our credit he also seemed extremely confused about why the bus we'd gotten on had turned out to be wrong and what we should do to get where wanted to go. Eventually he figured out which line to take and told me the next one would come along in thirty minutes. Thirty minutes! Who has that kind of time? I asked, "Can we walk there?" and he said, "Yes!" I checked Google Maps and it said 23 minutes of walking. Much better. So we did that.
Of course, it's the mountains and naturally the whole thing was directly uphill, but it was still the best decision.
Pretty pumped to see we were on the right track.
The Open Air Museum is an outdoor sculpture park designed to fit the landscape.
They did a great job - it's gorgeous, a perfect place to wander around.
They also have a hot springs foot bath.
Here is also where we first spotted Japan's giant black and yellow spiders which the internet claims are harmless. Right, right. We saw these everywhere, all over the country.
As it turned out, the Open Air Museum was a 2 minute walk from a train station. Perhaps that would have been easier than trying the bus. We took it straight back down and transferred to the other line back to Tokyo.
Shimbashi train station, adjoining our hotel, is a huge place connected to many shops and restaurants. Because we were hot and tired, we popped into a dining area on the second floor and ended up getting some really great Taiwanese food. Here's Ben's beef noodles. I didn't take a picture of mine.
People were smoking in the restaurant! Shocking! In all the cities and towns we visited, smoking isn't allowed on the streets, but many restaurants allow it during certain hours. In hotels and train stations, even on the bullet trains themselves, there are closed-in designated areas for smoking - in our Tokyo hotel, it was right next to the laundry area, which seemed weird. Mostly, though, when you're walking around it seems as if smoking doesn't exist.
We only had one more day in Tokyo to go! I was already getting sad about leaving.
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