Day 7 – Kamakura Day

Three trainings in a row does make you tired. We had a good night sleep and I dreamed well. Although we took a long time to leave, we were not specifically in a hurry. It was a sightseeing day not a training day, sodesne?

After an hour on the train we arrived at Kamakura temple complex. When you travel with your pasmo card, you pay per distance. Sometimes it’s cheaper to buy a Tokyo Free Kippu (ticket), this will get you anywhere on the Tokyo metro, JR lines and subway. For the rest, pay cash or pasmo.

On the train you’re not suppose to use your phone and you have to turn the silent mode on. In the proximity of the curtesy seats you even have to switch it off! We figured that the Japanese at least acknowlegde the dangers of their network for comuters with baby’s and old people with pacemakers. For the rest of the train, silent mode: you nearly see every Japanese sms’ing or chatting so imagine what a noisy chaos it would become if they all would talk and try to raise above the chaos of the other people also shouting on their phone in such a close environment!

At the entrance of the temple we bought some good fortune and figured out that we should wash our hands before we would go up the stairs.

I must say, it’s really impressive the beauty of it all. It’s kind of amazing to think that it was just a few hundred years ago that these temples were build. They are in such good shape that you can easely imagine that you’re way back into time. These temple complexes close at four o’clock so it’s nearly impossible to see them all; I guess we’ll have to come back sometime!

It was quite a change to be out of the the buzzy center town of Tokyo and to breath in fresh air. Just being amongst the trees and the bamboo brought a kind of inner rest and de-stresses the body. But not as good as an Onsen!

As we went on for the other temples in the neighbourhood we noticed a little shop on the other side of the village road. We went in with curiosity and came out with some nice things. We think we made a bargain, for those prices, you would wish that you had brought more money to spend on real nice stuff like these. I can’t understand why people buy plastic fake rubbish. It’s like buying a plastic toysword to practice kenjutsu with. There’s no authenticity in that.

Satisfied we walked down the street, took the train home. We went for a pizza and I ordered a big beer; I had failed to notice that a ‘pitcher’ (thats what they call them because Japanese love baseball) is a remarkable 1800cc ! Remarkable because the Japanese are notorious for being bad drinkers: they usually can’t take more than one good pint and they’re drunk. I didn’t expect to have such a Tamou beer but hey, it came in my size. The Japanese looked over their shoulders to see how a westerner bolsters this kind of exhiliration. They were visually surprized when I walked out straight and not zig-zagging.

We see drunk youth all the time. Often with their head preliminary and precausiously stuck in a plastic bag. You know: they might vomid and hoooo, then the street would get all messed up. We see that too, all dried up but it doesn’t stay long there, usually the next day, the street is clean again. We first tought that those kids were sniffing glue or something: but they’ll just overact: because that’s their culture. (Ofcourse: if you play sick, it doesn’t take long before your dinner is on the street sodesne?!) But when I first saw it, I was ready to jump in, and start a resucitation.

After we got home, unpacked our stuff, admired it and fell sound asleep.