Hiking Through Kamakura

A day or two later, Jen invited me to go hiking with her & some of her friends. MC came along too, so we met Jen at the train station in Kamakura. She has a friend who works at the Stars & Stripes as a reporter who brought a friend, who in turn invited 2 other friends. Somehow another gal showed up too, so there we were - all 8 of us! I was really excited to meet so many new people. They were civilians who live in Japan, which was really intriguing. I wanted to know how they all ended up in a foreign country. So we took off for our walk led by one gal who knew the area & had a hiking guide. Our first stop was an out-of-the-way temple.



There was a guy chanting on a shrine next to a rack that held candles. The ritual is that you light your candles, place them on the rack, and then turn around to the incense urn & you cleanse yourself by wafting the smoke towards you.


The most important part is the final step, in which you place your money in a basket and then cleanse it with the water inside the cave. I have never seen this at any other shrine, but here it is considered good fortune. I placed my yen, my American money, and my credit cards in there. I hope it worked.


A few temples ago I had purchased a book which you can get signed at each temple (for a fee, of course). It's really neat, though, because the writing is beautiful & unique to each place. I'll try to get a pic of it up here at some point.

We continued on our excursion over a hill and through the woods. Our 'hike' ended up being more of a nature walk, but I enjoyed it immensely.


A little while later, we ran across another temple area.

This one was unique in that there was a tunnel near the back of the cemetery with no lighting that went in about 35 yards. Three of us went in to see how far back it went, and we couldn't see a thing.

It was outside of this temple that I managed to get a picture of everyone.


After we walked back to the train station, 4 of us continued on to another rather large temple.


After touring this temple, we hopped back on the train for the ferris wheel area of Yokohama. I think it's called Moto-machi. There was supposed to be a street-performer's festival throughout the city, so we went to check it out. MC & I ended up getting separated from the other girls, but it was a lot of fun to be out & about with all those people. There were performances going on all around, but they were geared more for children. In one area, there were groups of people trying out the new toys they had bought. I got a picture of this little girl with her father - they both look really happy.