Kamakura!

Met up with Mom and Dad this morning and we headed towards the station in search of a place to eat. Not finding any place with "normal" breakfast food, we stopped into Excelsior Caffe near by. It's basically a StarBucks with more food options and they were able to get some US style breakfast sandwiches there. After that we headed to the station for an hour train ride to Kamakura.

After we arrived at Kamakura, we headed to Engakuji Temple close to the station and walked around there for a bit. Engakuji is the home of the Shari-den Shrine which is a National Treasure and houses one of Buddha's teeth. We climbed over 100 stairs to get up there and see it!

From there we headed to our next stop which was Kenshoji Temple about 15 minutes away. On the way there we stopped at a ice cream stand and got some sweet potato flavored ice cream. It was pretty good!

Kensho-ji Temple is pretty big and consists of a couple buildings. The gate there was moved from Kyoto and the Hatto hall is the largest wooden Buddhist structure in Eastern Japan. We walked around there and took some pictures and then headed to Kamakura station.

At Kamakura station we looked for a place to eat and took a locals recommendation for a nearby Soba restaurant. After that we jumped on the bus and headed to the Big Buddha. The statue weighs 121 tons and used to be protected by a temple around it until a tidal wave in 1948 came and washed the building away.

After that we took the bus back to Kamakura and then the Train back to Tokyo. For dinner we went to Ootoya and we all got the Tonkatsu. Before heading back we stopped in at Gaba so they could see where I worked and then across the street to the Cozy Corner where we got some good cream puffs that they have there.