Hi! Well, it's been a busy couple of weeks. October 9th was Gary's birthday. He wanted to go to Ogikubo and wander around Walmart...I didn't let him! That's what an OLD man would do I told him. He even mentioned looking at light bulbs!!! Instead, I dragged him off to Tokyo Bay and Odaiba. Even the trip there is like a mini tour of the city!
I loved the stained glass window in this station!
Riding the monorail through the city was cool. If you look closely you can see people in the building.
We had a nice day seeing the sites and had dinner at Chinese buffet.
At night the scenery of Tokyo Bay from the restaurant balcony was even prettier.
On Sunday after service we had a little birthday fellowship!
M brought delicious spaghetti and lumpia, a Filipino egg roll that is scrumptious!
And of course we had the birthday cake selection which was enjoyed by all!
Sometime in the time frame between this and the last blog post, we managed to also have two typhoons come through Tokyo bringing lots of wind and rain! Hopefully typhoon season is over now!
Last Saturday it was a beautiful day out, Gary was studying for Sunday service so I decided to go out exploring. I headed to Kamakura!
It was a bit of a trip and took a couple of hours. I was curious to see the local beach and also there is the 2nd largest buddha statue there that I thought I'd check out. Kamakura is a smallish town and a bit hilly. When I exited the station, I took a look at the area map and headed in the general direction it suggested. Pretty soon I saw groups of people and just started following them as I posited that they were also headed to see the sights and I'd eventually end up somewhere interesting!
I passed this funny dentist office on the way!
Lots of walking was involved...for a long way! Fortunately, it was a pretty day out!
It's hard to convey through a picture how big this thing is. It amazes me it was built in 1252, how they managed that without modern contraptions amazes me. It weighs several tons and they didn't have heavy machinery to help. The statue used to be housed inside a temple, but by some accounts,about 500 years ago a tsunami swept away the temple and the statue has been standing outdoors ever since. It must have been a big tsunami as the statue is quite a distance from the beach and up a hill too! There were many people, tourists and locals alike. Apart from one or two faithful looking people it really appeared to be mostly a tourist stop with people taking pictures etc.
A closer view.
In the back of the statue there are windows and also a side opening that you can enter and climb up inside the statue. I declined to climb inside.
After a short time I was ready to go looking for the beach! On the way I passed several shops with souvenirs of the area. Many of them had pictures of Obama in them from when he visited the area apparently.
As I was following another group of people I saw a little shop with a long line outside of it. Naturally,I had to stop and see what all the fuss was about!
Turns out it was a little shop that was making large, paper thin octopus crackers!
Apart from the cool factor, that they were somehow able to take real octopus and a bit of batter I presume and grill/press it into a huge paper thin cracker...it was delicious! It had a delicious grilled flavor and definitely worth the wait in line! I tried to bring some back for Gary, but it was very fragile and only a few small pieces survived the trip home. (for those of you saying, "eeewww octopus" let me tell you that octopus is one of the freshest cleanest tasting sea foods there is.)
Anyway, I then continued my walk downhill, figuring the beach was probably somewhere in the downhill direction. I was right!
It wasn't the prettiest beach I've seen but I'll definitely come check it out next summer. There were people out windsurfing and paddle boarding. There was also an inordinate number of fish leaping out of the water! I tried but didn't succeed in getting a picture of them, but it was fun to sit and watch them leaping at least a foot or two out of the water!
I pulled out my juice and onigiri from my bag and had a nice little picnic enjoying the water and sound of the waves.
I wasn't the only one with this idea.
It was getting late and I still had a couple hours to get back home so I headed back. I decided to take a different route home. It was a little longer but I'd heard the view was worth it.
I headed back to Hase station which I'd passed on my way down to the beach so at least I didn't have to go searching for it! Hase station was very small!
The trains were old school.
There were so many passengers waiting that I had to wait for the second train before I even managed to fit in to the train. It was crazy crowded...zero personal space allowed! I finally managed after a couple of stops to move to the side so only my back half was butt to butt with someone else!
However, I had heard true and the view along the coast was quite nice as we rode along!
After several stops we arrived in Fujisawa where I disembarked to change to a different train line. I needed a little breather before re-boarding another train so I wandered around the station a little bit and took a few pictures.
Then I headed home!
That's it for Adventuring with Lisa! Hope you enjoyed my ramblings.
Laters!
