Adventures in Japan

Day 23: Wet Money and Economy Sized Buddha

I thought that Carla had booked us too much time in Tokyo. I was wrong. We are scrambling to fit it all in. The fact that we have spent two days shopping with nothing to show for it hasn't helped much.

Today we took a day trip out to Kamakura. The plan was to do a nice walking tour past a couple points of interest and end up at the giant Buddha. It was a great plan. The hike was though nice tree covered hills. It kept the temperature down and the sun from burning us. It also kept the sun from drying out the ground. The muddy, muddy ground.

Mud is a funny thing. One minute it is trying to suck the shoe off your foot with its stickiness, the next it making people slip and slide all over the place. It was somewhat treacherous. Throw in some uneven ground and rocks and roots and such. And children. I think that every school in the surrounding areas had sent their kids to run around under our feet.

They were loud, which wasn't so nice. But sometimes they fell down in the mud, so it all worked out.

There were shrines and temples along our walk. We didn't take any pictures. We barely even slowed down. Kids everywhere.


Zeniarai Benten was dirty with kids. That's a joke, see, cuz Zeniarai Benten is a shrine where people wash their money. The belief is that if you wash your money in the water from the cave near this shrine and then spend said money, your money will return to you ten-fold.

Neither Carla nor I got our money soggy. We couldn't. There were too money people between us and the water.

After that Carla and I then trudged to the big Buddha, the DaiButsu.

Here's an odd thing: both Carla and I remember reading about a giant Buddha in one of the many Gaijin magazines we picked up. The Buddha we read about was truly massive, there was an elevator inside of it. To take you from the gift shop to the museum to the look out point. You looked out through the Buddhas third eye. Sounded really cool.

Either Carla and I both imagined the article, or the article was about a non-Japanese giant Buddha.

The Buddha we saw today was big. You could go inside it. There were stairs inside. They did not lead to a gift shop, or a museum, or a really awesome view through the Buddha's enlightened eye. It led to a bunch of loud kids talking loudly about how dark it was inside the somewhat large Buddha. It was pretty dark. And loud.


Kamakura also has a beach. We figured a trip to the beach would be nice, so we set off for the beach. We stopped by a shrine on the way there. It was a lovely little place. Nice flowers, nice ponds, a really big gold plated statue. A nice diversion on the way to the beach.

The beach itself was not all that great. Gunky sand covered in trash and seaweeds. And kids.

But the roar of the ocean, the hypnotic ebb and flow of the tide... that is just so primaly peaceful it would take a lot more than children to ruin it.


All that took us less time to do than we had planned on, so we got back into Tokyo early. We went shopping.

Hardly bought anything.

Crud.