Today is a public holiday in Japan, so Kaoru had the day off work to show me around. I decided I should respect the local holidays, and had the day off work myself 🙂

The first place we went to was Kamakura Daibutsu (the Big Buddah). We were able to go inside the buddah, which was pretty cool. The way he was constructed was described inside.

Then it was off to Hase Temple. Along the way we were a bit hungry, so had some food. After sweet potato crocket, that didn’t quite hit the spot, we had deep fried pizza.

At the temple, there were a truck load of steps to go up, but the view was worth it! We could look out over the sea, and see people on paddle boards, and walking along the beach. I got a fortune while I was there – given I had such a bad one when I was last in Japan, I thought how much worse could it get? Well, apparently I’m “gifted”, because this one was pretty much just as bad! I tied it to the pole, to send the bad luck away.

We walked around a bit, and then went to an old cafe. This was quite unique to me. It had a 1950’s type of look about it, and even the music playing was from that era, and sounded like it should have been coming from a record player!

Our next destination was Tsurugaokahachimangu Temple. There we prayed (I didn’t remember the full ritual, but Kaoru reminded me). I contemplated trying another fortune. *Finally* I managed to get a good one, although it was the only one that didn’t have any English on it, so I’m trusting Kaoru on this. Instead of tying it to the pole to send the luck away, I kept this one.

It had been a long day, with lots of walking with my heavy backpack, so we went back to the hotel in Shinagawa. After dropping things off and catching up on emails, we went to the other side of the train station (downtown Shinagawa) and had a Japanese BBQ for dinner. Here we cooked our own food on a burner in front of us. Really makes the chef’s job easy! It was, once again, a great feast!