Kamakura

Hasedera Temple

Well, I slept until 5 AM last night which I’ll call a win Trevor and the kids all had great sleeps. We didn’t have to leave until about 9 AM this morning to head to Kamakura. It took about an hour and a half to get there so we got there at 10:30 AM. Turns out honestly we should’ve left a little bit earlier as the first shopping street was really really fun. 

Getting stamps at the station near our Airbnb

The first place we went in Kamakura was a shopping street called Komachi-dori. It had so many different types of street foods all which were on our scavenger hunt We ended up changing our entire plan for the day because this street was so fun and we had such a good time stopping at all the shots and also eating all the food We were going to do Japanese barbeque for lunch, but we ended up just snacking on street food It was also just a really excellent place for shopping with lots of interesting stores to pop into. We aren’t huge souvenir purchasers on trips usually but we do enjoy popping into the stores now and again and seeing what they have for sale Cara had a lot of interesting places to shop.

Japan has gachapon stores everywhere which are capsule vending machines there are 1 million different kinds and they’re usually between one and four dollars

There was one for women’s skin care products and Anna used Google Translate and we were laughing at the translation

Sometimes you just see the weirdest things in Japan

The kids each did one Owen and Anna did a Pokémon one and got a little Pokémon figure and Joel did another one. I can’t remember what it was. all of the kids have been passing time in subways and waiting in lines playing Pokémon go

Quick Chiro stop

This was one of the items on our scavenger hunt. It’s called Warabi mochi it’s a jelly like mochi dusted with roasted soy bean flour. We really did not like this. It had a very strange taste and a very strange texture. 

Owen got a Crepe

Trev got a pork bun with Shirasu on top. The Shirasu is the white bait fish so each one of those tiny little white things is a full fish. Chemical Cora is known for this specialty and it’s everywhere


This is a close-up of the disgusting looking fish

And I got a raspberry lemonade

I thought I ordered a curry and cheese pan which means bread, but this one didn’t have a very curry taste so I may have accidentally just ordered the cheese and meat version.  It actually tasted a lot like meat pie.

Another scavenger food item candied strawberries

These were gyoza on a stick

Then, since my first try, wasn’t really a curry pen I had to get a real curry pen

I didn’t get very good pictures because this shop was so crowded, but there was a shop filled with hundreds of types of chopsticks. We all picked two sets except for Trev. He picked one and some of us got our names engraved. I took pictures at the end of this post to me these are the perfect souvenirs. We will definitely use them and they are small to carry home and they weren’t too too expensive.

Premier, we left the shopping area of Kamakura and started to explore the different temples. About A 10 minute walk away was Tsurugaoka Hachimang Shrine

We had to get new And we all got pretty good fortunes this time so maybe we’ll call it a day and call it a success

Owen reading his fortune

Anna shaking the container to see what fortune she would get

Thankfully, none of us had to tie our bad fortune to this rack this time

After that, we decided to walk through town 20 minutes to the next area instead of taking a bus. It was really kind of cool walking through just a regular Japanese neighborhood. We stopped at a corner store to get some cold drinks and Joel got these Pokémon cards as a souvenir.

We got to Hokokuji Temple. This is a zen garden temple with a bamboo forest. Just a small place but one of my favourites of the day!  So peaceful there!

Trev has been freezing the whole trip and finally he splurged and bought a hat today at a store that we passed when we got to this area we laughed as Trevor perfectly matched the statue. It’s quite common to see statues trust in some clothing like this one

When we left here We decided to take the bus back and we had great timing because the bus was going by the stop just as we approached so we got back to chemical station quite quickly

We’ve been took the train three stops to a different part of Kamakura. This is called Kōtoku-in and it’s a huge Buddha statue made entirely of cast copper!  It is from 1252!

You could pay 50 yen (about 50 cents) to consider it!

Last stop of the day was a 10 minute walk away it is called Hasedera Temple. There 

Are about 1300 of these statues that are meant to represent unborn or deceased children and their memory

You can’t take pictures of the main temple, but I’ve included a photo from Google of the beautiful statue that was inside. Owen was very disappointed. He couldn’t take pictures cause he really liked it.

There was a little cave to explore. It didn’t realize how low the ceilings would be and it was hilarious seeing Trevor and Joel almost having to crawl through this thing.

One of my favourite statues of the day so cute

Trev got these socks from family Mart one of the convenience stores as a souvenir they are branded with the family mark colours 

Since we had skipped the Japanese barbecue/hot pot (shabu shabu)lunch and we were getting hungry, we decided to do that for dinner. This dinner turned out to be so delicious and so fun. We knew it was going to be a pricey one, but honestly compared to Canadian prices. I don’t think it was that expensive.it was the equivalent of $47 (and that includes all tax and tip). That would be the equivalent of about $36 plus tax and tip at a Canadian restaurant which is an expensive meal but not insane. And wait till you see what we got for that. 

First, they brought us out this appetizer, which was a daikon radish with beef slices beside it. It was honestly absolutely delicious.

Next they brought out our veggies and got the hot pot going. We had two of these big pots. They put broth in the pot with the veggies and turned it on to start to boil.

Pouring the broth in

Next, they brought us out a tray of sauces

Then they brought out our tower of meat. We had two of these on our table. All different kinds of beef and pork, including Wagyu beef

I actually somehow never got a picture, but they eat also gave us each a plate in front of us with very thinly sliced meat that almost looked like bacon or prosciutto and I think we each had a five pieces of that

The centre of the pot was a grill to grill the meat and then the veggies were boiling in the broth on the side

You can see right in front of my spot that they also brought a little individual tray with salt wasabi, and some sort of sauce

You can see now that the veggies have boiled a little bit and we’re now cooking our some of our meat

Oh actually, you can see the individual plates of meat in front of Anna in this picture. Those ones were very thin and you would put them in the broth to cook.

They then brought out two of these little towers that had three levels to them. The first top level had tofu that we could cook. The second two levels had different types of noodles that you couldn’t then add to the bro.

We were all super stuffed after all of this meat and noodles and tofu and appetizer Everything was absolutely delicious. Seriously every single bite.

Amen to top it all off they brought this delicious dessert

After that, we did the one and a half hour ride back to our Airbnb in Tokyo we got back at 8 PM and we’re all feeling pretty worn out and tired. It’s now 9:45 PM and I can’t wait to finish this so I can turn off the lights.

Here are our chopsticks that we got the one on the left is Owen‘s. He got the kanji dragon engraved on his since his chopsticks have dragons. Anna‘s are on the right and they have sparkles

Owen‘s on the left and annas the right

Trev just got one pair on the left and those are my two pairs on the right

Trevor translated his name into Japanese and realize that they would say it Torebaa Maasharu  So he has been calling himself that all week. 

We tried to get Trevor engraved (we asked for just the kanji but there was a language barrier. We wrote Trevor and she said Torebaa?  And the she wrote out the kanji. When we went to pick them up they wrote Torevor on them which Trev thinks is hilarious! 😆 

And the these are Joel’s. 

Lastly, in Kamakura they had a lot of these pictures of Obama visiting. So Owen started AIing Obama into our pics which he thought was hilarious!

Bedtime!  18,600 steps today!