Happy Halloween! Had a really great Friday of crisp beautiful autumn weather and a great Halloween lesson with my favourite class, as showed below! The students in that class are just such a pleasure to teach and whether actually interested or not, the always manage to feign interest in my class so for all their hard work, we made origami pumpkins! It was a great day!
Then after school I had Nikki meet me at the train station and we went to Kofu for the evening. We stopped at one of my favourite shrines, with all the zodiac animal as statues in this little grove of woods tucked to the back, at sunset. It was lovely and the lighting was warm and gorgeous! After we did a bit of shopping and went out for curry for dinner!
The next morning we had to be up earlyish to take the train to Kamakura! It was a brilliant blue day to contrast the white sky I encountered last time. We didn’t have as much time as last so I took Nikki to what I believed was the best of the best that Kamakura had to offer: Hase temple, daibutsu, Zeninari Benten shrine, Hachimangu shrine and of course a bit of the hiking trails I loved so much from last time!
Hasedera was as beautiful as ever but less crowded this time and we enjoyed strolling about, through the caves and the path of prospects and after shared a steam bun and looked at the hawk dappled view of Kamakura. Next it was to the great Buddha where we ran into some university students from Tokyo in an English communications degree who asked if it would be okay to give us a tour so that was fun as we ate some ice cream!
Next I dragged Nikki up into the hills to follow a hiking trail to the next shrine. The weather was the perfect temperature and all the hikers were in such pleasant moods that the Japanese and gaijin alike were actually quite friendly and talkative. The Benten srhine is dedicated to the snake goddess which is related to wealth and with less crowds I was actually able to go and wash my money this time in order to double my luck with money! Fingers crossed this time! The shrine was so cool with the way it’s hollowed into a hill so that the easiest way to it is through a cave tunnel and little caves within the shrine hold koi fish and islands of lanterns and shrines built into the rock!
As it was past four now, in Japan that means the sun is setting… so with one more stop we had to pick up the pace and only got side tracked by a few cute chops and maybe a warm cup of coffee, but it all worked out for when we arrived at the last shrine we were blessed with a gorgeous sunset and the shrine all lit up brilliant in a way that made it shine brighter and the twilight sky bluer. I stood at the top of the stairs for a long time thinking there was nothing more beautiful than watching the sun set between the lanterns over the town from the vantage point of a shrine, until a slim crescent of the moon seemed to appear from nowhere, completing the portrait of beauty!
We finished the day with canned hot chocolate from a vending machine, that actually comes out hot!, and then dinner at the café before retiring to our hostel in Yokohama!
On Sunday I took Nikki to Enoshima! It was a great day but to make up from the blue sky in Kamakura, there was a white one over the island. Regardless we had a great morning, climbing up and over the islands hill and admiring each of the little shrines on the way before spending an hour or so playing around in the tidal pool and watching the fishermen at work. There were these cute little neon blue fish and tiger striped fish in the pools and we think we saw a puffer fish but I couldn’t scare if enough to puff!
In the afternoon we went to Tokyo for dinner and then headed home after a great weekend but not before I snapped a few shots of a strange parade that went by and nighttime in Shibuya!
This weekend Nikki goes home… it feels so weird that there is still five months to go and a small part of me would like to go home with her as I miss my friends and family and food! But, another part of me knows I’m not ready yet! Still loving Japan!
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