Temples, rodents and pork

Welcome to Kamakura, population: 173 588. 8 billion of you count the squirrels.

Since I last wrote, I have explored my hometown of Kugahara, eaten expensive pancakes at the Moomin-kafé and almost gone to see sumo wrestling.

But most memorably, I went to Kamakura on sunday for some quiet sightseeing of old Japan.

Kamakura is one of a few cities in Japan that the US ear-marked for preservation during the bombings of the second World War. Or, so they say.

It is unclear how Henry L Stimson and others influenced president Truman in the decision to spare Kyoto, but it wasn't the only city whose historical value was deemed too great to... well, lay flat.

While probably not quite as magnificent as Kyoto (I have yet to go there), Kamakura is the place to go for temples and shrines (and let's be honest, that's why we all came to Japan in the first place, right?)

It took about an hour from Kugahara, which itself is about an hour from central Tokyo. So a bit of a journey, but surprisingly cheap. We passed Yokohama, which I thought was pretty far off. So that's promising as far as daytrips from Tokyo goes.

Anyway, the company was my surrogate-mother Akiko-san, and my fellow house guest students Eric and José. We started early, by Akiko-san's orders, and by lunch had visited a couple of ancient and revered sights, including the Great Buddha (yes, the God himself.)

We delayed lunch and instead decided to take a cookie-break. Apparently, Kamakura is a seaside town, so we had a nice view. (And how the hell did I miss that? I mean the pacific is a rather substantial body of water.)

And thus it was, that we came upon the mythical creature known only as: Cookie Snatcher. It was no surprise that this fabled being of ancient Japanese folklore surfaced here, at a shrine dedicated to nature itself. And on this beautiful, sunny sunday, that we should encounter first-hand the doings of such a sneaky-as-fuck animal.

I was off to the vending machine to purchase a can of hot tea. Yes, they have hot drinks in vending machines here. Pretty neat.

Suddenly, out of nowhere (or rather, from right above us) the bird struck. Akiko-san was helping herself to a lemon-ish biscuit when SWOOOSH, a lightning of feathers and sneakyness dove from the heavens and yoinked said treat from her hand!

Needless to say, there was much commotion from on-lookers, who frantically ran for their lives as the beast ascended upwards.

This was probably the most exciting thing that happened all day, which was kind of nice.

We continued to find and appreciate shrines, washing our hands with water to purify our blackened souls and inhaling incense to… give us asthma, I guess.

One shrine, dedicated to the fox, was particularly picturesque. It was located at the top of a long flight of stairs, lined with narrow tori gates and fox statues. As we reached the shrine itself, we realized that the foxes had all been killed or enslaved. By squirrels.

There were literally fifty thousand squirrels (well, about six) casually skipping about between the treebranches, and we got close enough to feed a couple of them with cookies (yes, feeding fauna with cookies was the theme for this day). One even climbed onto Eric's coat.

We had lunch at a nice, very japanese restaurant which gave me reason to reflect on two annoying facts: there's nothing to eat here but meat. What the fuck? And also, it's perfectly fine to smoke in restaurants, even McDonald's. Again, what the fuck, Japan?

Like I said, Kamakura (Japanese for "old stuff") is a modest treasure of preserved houses and landmarks, and more than any shrine I enjoyed just walking through the small town and seeing the odd Edo-style house pop up. Some aren't genuine, I know, but some are and it doesn't really matter. It's beautiful.

All in all, that was a nice sunday. We had planned to do something nice this weekend too, but it seems nature is poking me in the proverbial eye with some cold weather on sunday. 

So that sucks.

Anyway, pictures from Kamakura:

The Great Buddha

This way to trains, toilets and nazis

Two cars in every garage

A squirrel and a cookie