Day 3 saw us on a day excursion to Kamakura to see a 700 year-old Great Buddha and take a romp through the Hakone mountains. Moko, our tour guide, explained that Kamakura is something of a hot spot for people visiting shrines and temples, and it seems like she was right. But first, a few interesting photos from the bus as we left Tokyo for the day.
I still don't know what this building was, but I can't say I've ever seen anything like it.
This was part of Haneda Airport, which is the airport I was supposed to land in originally.
Mount Fuji! Fujiyama is literally translated as Fuji-mountain, but Moko assured us that many Japanese call him Fuji-san. This was my first good look at the mountain so far on this trip. Apparently, we're really lucky that it's clear enough to see from Tokyo. Moko said that several of her tour groups have gone their entire trip without seeing this elusive mountain. It feels a bit strange calling what we know to be a moderately immobile object elusive, but when you're looking for a picture of him, sometimes you would swear he really can move.
My theory is that you can't get enough pictures of cherry blossoms. The season for them is relatively short, and we've been lucky to have such a good stretch of blooms. I hope they're in season when we get to Kyoto. Moko said she'd been in Kyoto about two weeks ago, and it was still too early at the time for them. I also hope they're still in bloom back in Tokyo when I make it back.
As we drive through Kamakura, we pass by what I think is the main Shinto shrine in the town. This is the main Tori gate above.
And this is the walkway that goes for what I would have estimated at at least a quarter to half a mile from that Tori gate and down the middle of the road. As you can see, it's lined with cherry trees, and there are people enjoying the walk down the path. Moko explained that the path is lit up at night. It must be amazing. If the cherry trees are still in season in Tokyo towards the end of my trip, I make take an evening and some back up to Kamakura by train to get some night shots.
This shot is looking towards the back of the bus at the Tori gate at the opposite end of the path from the first Tori gate above.
We made it to the Great Buddha, and it's hard to describe how big he is, so I'll just show you.
As you can see, he's rather large. He's so large you can actually go inside him for 20 yen. There was quite a bit of interesting stuff to see, but not much to tell here. However, I am really glad we got here when we did. Remember when I mentioned Kamakura was something of a popular place for seeing shrines and temples? Well...
The kids were well-behaved, but it just got a bit busy. I was even asked by a Japanese family to take a picture of them, which I did of course. By this time we've explored all we can of the temple area, so we hop back on the buss to tour the Hakone mountains.
Nothing really to tell here. It just struck me as funny seeing a McDonald's at the time.
As we got closer to the Hakone mountains, the terrain obviously got a bit rougher. I have quite a few scenic shots, but two stuck out for me.
I didn't notice what I'd managed to get in this shot at first. But now that I look at it, I love how the cloud either is, or seems to be, crawling over the mountain.
This may be the best shot of the trip from my iPhone. That's a long-distance shot with the zoom on a camera phone, folks. Fuji-san was just peeking through the clouds. I love how I caught him right in a break in the clouds so he's framed by them.
We hopped on a cable car up to a fairly high point in the Hakone mountains. During the ride, we passed over a fairly active geothermic area, which yielded some neat shots.
Ok, not a geothermic shot, but a great few from the cable car.
That yellow stuff is sulfur. Moko had warned us that it would smell, but it wasn't quite as bad as I'd been afraid of.
Right as we disembarked from the train, we noticed something.
Fuji-san was poking his head out again! Ok, I take back what I said earlier. This may be the best pic of the trip taken with my iPhone.
The original plan was to take a walking path to visit some areas to see some areas that might have had some bubbling lava, but the path had been closed recently to fix some damage. So we enjoyed the views, took at look at souvenirs, then took the bus down to Lake Hakone, or Ashinoko to the Japanese. As we were waiting for our boat to depart, I ran into two bums just lying around.
Another cat came up and let me pet him for a bit, but eventually the boat was ready to leave, so it was all aboard.
We boated around Lake Hakone without incident and ended up back on the bus and on the way to take a bullet train!
The bullet train, or Shinkansen, is actually multiple bullet trains that cost different amounts and go different speeds depending on the number of stops on the way. As we were waiting in the station, I heard occasional rumblings that were a bit disturbing. At first I thought they might be the bullet trains, but the sounds seemed way too short to be bullet trains. Turns out I was wrong.
It was nearing time for our train to arrive, so we filed through the turnstiles and went up to the train platform. Within a minute, this Shinkansen came blasting through. I doubt it took more than 2 seconds for the whole thing to blow right past me. I doubt it even slowed down. It was impressive to say the least. What I didn't know at the time was the part about how not all the Shinkansen make regular stops at all stations along the way. I most definitely had been hearing other Shinkansens. I was just wrong to assume it was too short of a sound for them to possibly be passing by.
I guess they're called bullet trains for a reason.
We made it back to Tokyo around 6:30 or so. I had told Lizzy and Amanda about my first experience in Shinjuku Central Park with the locals picnicking and enjoying the cherry blossoms, so I take them over there. There wasn't quite the crowd that I had seen my first night, but it was still interesting to see again. We try to go see the Tokyo skyline from a tower in Shinjuku, but it's closed earlier than normal due to renovations of some sort.
We end up going to dinner in an upper level of Shinjuku station. After several false starts due to insufficient knowledge of the Japanese language and misunderstanding of the food displays, we finally just point to menu items. It was decent, but there were several things on there that I could have done without. Apologies again to the food snobs out there who want pictures. You'll have your share of local food shots soon enough.
Another eventful day in Japan. Sleep is near in my future, but the next post will be about Day 4 and the trek to Takayama. As far as current plans, we leave tomorrow to head to Kanazawa, with a stop along the way at Shirakawa.
Oyasumi nasai! (Good night!)
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