At last it's here! I must admit my rate of blogging has turned out to be most unpredictable. Please bear with me as I whip myself to writing when I'm not at Kendo practice or recovering from one. After this Kamakura post I have some pictures of the Tokyo University Festival and I plan to write a more thoughtful article on some of my experiences of Japanese society.

During my stay here I have only seen two other exchange students since the initial orientation, an Australian and a Dutch fellow, whose English speaking host mum had kindly offered to take us to Kamakura for the end of the weekend. We spent Saturday night at her house, haunted by her promise of a Zen Buddhist meditation session early next morning. "You guys can sit in Sazen (sitting on your knees) ok right?" she said. "Yes, but it does usually involve a never before experienced world of pain and suffering." we said. Unfortunately her Japanese mind (and knees) were unable to comprehend the doom she was sending us hapless gaijin into.

We woke up at 5:30 and hopped in the car, a form a transport which felt quite odd with the almost always more convenient option of taking a train. Arriving at the relatively small temple I really appreciated it's genuine beauty, the genuine monks cleaning the entrance (makes for a very "tempely" atmosphere) and the absence of tourists, most likely driven out by the rain or uninterested in the perhaps relatively insignificant temple.

The temple as viewed from it's garden.

This is a picture of where we meditated, though I don't really feel it conveys the atmosphere I experienced, probably because I didn't get the lighting settings on my camera right.

Outside the temple we took of our shoes and went inside, where we put on a hakama, before seating ourselves in what appeared to be a "waiting corridor" of some sort, looking out into the temple garden. Luckily it turned out we had cushions to sit on, significantly more comfortable than the wooden floor of Kendo practice. Finally we seated ourselves in the main room, having first been taught how to enter correctly, with some other Japanese and a French backpacker. The whole lesson lasted for about two and a half hours, which included pauses for instruction and practice on various aspects such as posture, breathing and concentration.

Despite the cushion, it was predictably painful. I tried to relax and just sit on top of my legs, hoping I would either get used to it or my legs would go numb. Numb they went, as I realised when I could no longer move my toes nor feel anything when I tried them during a pause in the meditation. Possibly the most painful part of the whole ordeal was practicing a cross legged position after my legs had been numb for a long time. This posture required getting up and shifting the cushions around, which was amusing yet difficult as I shuffled my two useless lumps of flesh, formerly legs, off the cushion; never before had my legs been so utterly numb. And never before had I experienced such furious pins and needles in my feet as the blood started to flow again in the cross legged position. Previously I could not have thought possible that the sensation could reach such levels of pain, it was like someone was peeling the skin off my feet and clawing at them with their nails. Soon the cross legged posture had my legs numb again.

Apart from the pain, it was, as far as meditation sessions go, a very interesting and real experience, and the memory still brings the sound of the rain outside and the appropriately tranquil atmosphere. Of course this is all looking back on it, and frankly I won't be needing another meditation session too soon. My exchange student friend's host mum was completely enthralled by the whole experience, while us gaijin were happy congratulating each other on surviving, and comparing the curious forms of pain we experienced. Nevertheless, I'm extremely glad I participated and I think it was the most interesting part of the visit, and definitely the one I will most remember.

Before leaving we took a stroll around the temple garden.

Bamboo. 

The graves of a very important historical Japanese family the name of which I forget. Apparently, after completely destroying their rival family to the last member, they became afraid of their malevolent spirits, and thus built a load of temples to appease them.  

Next it was time for a lunch of tempura soba before heading off to our first big temple. This one had other tourists as well.

This is the path to the temple between two roads. Apparently in ye olden times people would stick to either side of the path, its centre being reserved for the gods. Note how one of the statues has its mouth closed and the other has it open, that has some deep symbolic meaning too but I forget. 

Check out those American tourists getting excercise! Har har har, ain't I funny?

Those are barrels full of sake donated to the temple. There's the real secret to meditation folks, and who put their finger into my photo anyway? One of the particularly interesting things about this temple were the fortune telling machines. Shiny white metal boxes into which you pop a coin and get your fortune. I preferred to get it done the traditional way, letting a temple girl take my money and give me my fortune. Apparently my plans for marriage are doomed. Damn, my uncle had asked me to bring back a nice submissive Japanese wife to balance out for our family's women who seem to be getting a bit too modern.

 
At the temple we also bumped into a wedding ceremony between a Korean and Japanese couple, and were thus able to hear some traditional instruments being played as they came in.

The next temple was more spectacular, situated on a hill with a view of the Pacific Ocean. The first level of a temple was a beautiful garden, apparently an attempt by its creators to recreate heaven. Now that's ambitious.

The next level up was full of these little statues. Apparently each one of these represents a baby that didn't make it out alive... 

Tucked in the corner was this graveyard. 

At last the actual temple. Inside was a big statue of a buddha but you weren't allowed to take pictures of it.

You could follow another path a bit higher to look at the temple rooves.

The day was drawing to a close with only one more place to visit. A huge statue of a Buddha that was once inside a large temple, the only thing recovered after a tsunami.

Before the tsunami it was covered in gold leaf, the remnants of which you can just see up close in some of the crevices. 

With the day's sightseeing done, we headed back to the hotel for a nice bath and a very exciting time watching a ridiculously close game of women's volleyball in which Japan lost to Serbia by one point. You wouldn't believe how disappointing it was.

The next day we headed to Enoshima island via the Enoden, a famous local train line.

The island was fairly touristy, but there were plenty of street vendors selling various marine delectables. We had lunch in a nice alley restaurant. This time I had cold udon tempura, perfect for a hot summer's day. For desert I had an small ball of ice cream and anko (Japanese sweet red bean paste.) in a thin waffle. Then, after a short walk it was time to head back home.

On the way back we played "I spy with my little eye." in the car, and despite the protests of the Australian fellow and I, the host mum insisted on sharing the chocolate by giving a piece each time to the person who guessed correctly. This, naturally, ended up in me and the Australian giving each other very obvious clues and essentially passing the chocolate between the two us, while the other two were completely ignorant of our little scheming, despite our frankly atrocious acting: "Oh wow! How did you guess?" Not even the Australian's monstrous blunder when he pointed at his eye for me and then said "...something beginning with 'i'." to which I quite innocently asked "Don't you mean 'e'?" "Err... yes." Hysterical laughter followed, but our poor victims we're still in the dark. We were going to tell them about it, but thought it safest not to.