Kamakura Part 3: Tsurugaoka Hachimangu

Our third stop was the Tsurugaoka Hachmangu shrine dedicated to emperor Oji (originally built in 1063).

We had lunch at a noodle house and then toured the shrine.

Dave washing his hands before entering the shrine. 

That's a lot of stairs.

A wedding party was having their wedding photos taken there.

Pigeons!

Fishies!

A quick shot of the town.

Kamakura Part 2: The Great Buddha

The next stop on our Kamakura trip was the Great Buddha. And it is GREAT - Great, big, and green. 

It was a weird day, alternately sunny and cloudy. Of course when I snapped these photos, it was very cloudy and gray.

David in front of Buddha.

I neat water lilly statue.

We even had the opportunity to go inside the statue. I am very impressed with this 1252 work of art and faith.

Inside Buddha.

Signage.

Giant slippers woven for the Buddha by school children.

Happy Day Trippers.

Tomorrow: Part 3.

Happy Anniversary!

Friday was our 9th anniversary, pottery is the traditional gift. We did buy rice bowls last week, but my big present was a huge surprise.

A Takara Jenny!

I have been wanting one for a while and my amazing husband found a way to sneakily get one for me while I wasn't looking.

This is Fashionista Jenny (2010)

Her accessories: hair strands, clamps, and a hand clamp to attach them to her hair.

The directions, in Japanese, of course.

My miserable first attempt at attaching a hair strand.

Who knew playing with dolls could be so hard? ;)

Our Anniversary night also included a nice dinner at the O Club chop house, Chico's. We even got dressed up. Fancy. ;)

Kamakura Trip

This weekend, the husband and I took a trip to Kamakura. The bus trip was long and tedious, but well worth it.

Our first stop was Hase-Dera, a great Buddhist Temple.

Please click on photos to see them larger.

Fishies!

More Fishies!

The cave with the red arch is dedicated to Benzaiten, the sea goddess and only female of the 7 lucky gods of Japanese mythology. In the cave are hundreds of tiny statues placed by devotees in honor of lost children.

Happy Buddha! (Correction, this is Jizo)

This is an amazing temple. I look forward to visiting again. We did not have time to climb to the top of the overlook or explore the museum.

The statue of Kannon inside the main temple is amazing and worth the visit, even if that is the only thing you see. Unfortunately, photography is not allowed in the main temple and I revere copyright too much to post a scanned postcard image.

We then visited the Great Buddha. I will post about that tomorrow.

Onigiri and Bento

I'm sure you know the saying, "When in Rome...". Well, when in Japan...

I decided that part of the living in Japan experience should include producing and eating Japanese food and meals. This week, one of our experiments was making Onigiri.

Onigiri are rice balls compressed into a triangular shape with a strip of seaweed wrapped around it to keep fingers clean.

We learned one valuable lesson: storing them in the refrigerator overnight dried out the rice. Next time we will make them first thing in the morning so they can go straight into Dave's bento box.

Bento boxes are what Japanese lunches are packed into. Dave has a manly black Thermos bento that we bought at the Seiyu. The first lunch I packed him was such an American bento: roast beef sandwhich, carrot sticks, ranch dressing in a pig shaped container, and Fritos.

The next bento I packed for him was a little bit more Japanese:

Onigiri, soy sauce in the pig's head, carrot sticks, celery sticks, cheese, and 5-spice powder chicken.

And for those who want to know, I have 2 new mini sushi sets!

Octopus and California Rolls!

And here's a picture of all the sushi together. (Well, not all, there are 7 more sets to get in order to have them all.)