Kamakura
February 26, 2025.
Kamakura is one of the places Koinuko was most excited to go to! I was also excited to go as I wanted to see their giant Buddha. Hilariously we forgot about the Buddha because the rest of Kamakura was just so beautiful.
The big reason Koinuko wanted to go to Kamakura was to see the remains of the Hojo Clan's estate which is located beneath a tourist information center by the name of M's Ark. You can look down through the glass floor into the archaeological site! You can view the building's foundations and some shards of pottery. It's super cool. Koinuko had a lengthy conversation with the guy who ran the information center and bought a super cool bag.
Following this most important stop, we headed down Wakamiya Oji Avenue towards Tsurugaoka Hachimangu shrine. I don't know a lot about shrines or these historical areas, so Koinuko's blog likely gives a better recount of where we went. But the grounds of the shrine were enormous. On either side there were these enormous ponds with gorgeous gardens and scenery. More ancient buildings and small shrines littered the landscape.
Before we got to the main hall, we stumbled into Maruyama Inari Shrine. I saw a sign that said it was the oldest shrine on the grounds and simply had to check it out. It was up a very small and kind of scary stone and dirt path, but it was very beautiful and peaceful. It was exciting to see inari statues in real life.
The Main Hall itself is a marvel of human creativity. There are gorgeous carvings of animals along the tops of the buildings. I wrote a prayer on an ema there with Koinuko and hung it up in the hopes that we may meet again someday! We also visited the on site museum which held many incredibly beautiful swords, artworks and other artifacts. There is an extremely long scroll there with an artwork depicting some historical event that really impressed me. Sadly photography was not permitted.
The ponds around the grounds were full of koi and carp which were very friendly and you could also buy food for! Be careful when trying to feed the fish, though. We were swarmed by pigeons and had to help another tourist who was also swarmed by pigeons. The pigeons are very fun though if you're into having birds land on you. We stopped to play with the birds and fish at a delightful viewing area that was beside a kindergarten.
Following this we were getting pretty hungry so we decided to make our way to the shopping street we passed on the way. We ended up getting super duper lost and wound up at the Kamakura National Treasure Museum! This museum was awesome!!! The museum itself is a delightful, near 100 year old building that houses two separate exhibits. The first exhibit is for ancient buddhist statues. The second exhibit apparently changes every few months, but when we visited it was for hina dolls!!! Being able to see dolls that were hundreds of years old made my heart sing. It wasn't just dolls, it was also dioramas and doll houses. This exhibit was probably one of my favourite things I saw in Japan. Sadly this also didn't permit photography.
After that delightful detour we made our way to Kamachi Street, the main tourist shopping street. This street featured many traditional souvenir and arts and craft stores as well as many restaurants and street food stalls. The arts and crafts stores were really cool, but many of the things were too delicate for me to brave taking back home to New Zealand. There were also many traditional street food vendors which we sampled.
The last place we visited was a vintage yoshoku (Japanese-Western fusion style) cafe called Iwata Coffee Shop. Visiting one of these vintage cafes was another of my wish list activities in Japan! We ordered a set of club sandwiches and a matcha parfait to share. I also got myself a melon soda and it came with a little cherry! You can view the inside of the shop here
After this, we got back on the train to Ikebukuro and back to our Air BnB to prepare for our final full day...
