I say this with love, but you better like temples (shrines) if you want to enjoy Japan and Korea. More than that, you better enjoy trying to spot the narrow differences between some of them and what make them all special. Now, they aren't all special - do your homework, understand going in which are the better ones, which are the more forgettable ones, etc., and you will leave a happy person. Kamakura was my parents first taste of that - in a way it was mine as well, the one day trip I actually managed to do during my time in Tokyo in 2013 (as I've now revealed a few times, by that point in my RTW Trip I had fairly strong home sickness/FOMO and was super lazy). But even for me, this was like re-discovering it.
The day started with us managing to get out of the house early enough to get an earlier train down to Kamakura than expected. The train from Shimbashi there is about 50 minutes, but its essentially an extended commuter train that was fairly busy for the first half of taht until we got past Yokohama, at which point it emptied out a lot. After a quick bit of shut-eye, we got to Kamakura, which I really forgot about how small and beautiful it all is. Even the area right outside the station, with teh Kamachi-Dori shopping area on one side, and the trains to the various temples on teh other side - including the little Enoden train/tram, which we took from the main station over to Hase station, which is where our first two stops were - the Hasedera Temple and the Kotoku-In Temple (more known as the Great Buddha temple). We went to the latter first, because it was a bit further away so we could start there and walk back.
The Great Buddha Temple is mostly about the Great Buddha, a 30-foot or so bronze buddha statue in the middle of an otherwise fairly staid temple complex. The other beauty is the scenery, all of these are tucked into various bits of hills, forests, etc. You know you are now far away from Tokyo and far into the beautiful Japanese scenery. The Hasedera Temple which was next is more a proper temple - a real first temple for my parents, full of the many different smaller buildings, the various steps adn walls adn steps and walls, the lotus flowers, the buddha statues all over. The Hasedera is probably the best temple in Kamakura (to me), and the best example of what they will see a bunch in Kyoto and other places. My favorite aspect was this running character of Nozomi that they have, a fat, smiling cartoonish buddha statue and figure that shwos up a half dozen times in the temple complex, and is beloved I guess to have its own souvenir store right outside.
Trying to break up the string of temples, from there we headed to lunch, which first took us on a 20-minute traipse through Kamakura, including ten or so minutes walking along the beachfront. Now, this isn't the most beautiful beach in teh world, but it was weird to remember taht Kamakura is a beach town, something that I think gets (probably rightfully) lost among the temples and secrets. Anyways, the walk over to our lunch got the appetite going so we could rightly experience the brilliance that was Unagi No Okamura - a classic Unagi spot where we get our own private room (sliding doors) and first a series of small bites, from great picked vegetables to a lovely mushroom chawanmushi, to miso soup and then of course the main event, a brilliant box of perfectly cooked barbecued unagi over rice. Eel is one of my lowkey favorite things within the Japanese cooking ouevre and I'd dreamed of meals like this - so much so I have booked and/or planned a couple more. Those have a high bar to clear, as Unagi No Okamura was just brilliant.
That meal also geared us up for more walking than I had planned in our post-lunch tour of temples all to the Eastern side of Kamakura, which has a series of them in the hills. The chasallenge was they are all 10-15 minutes apart walking, which is just short enough to make calling a cab to this more remote part of the city not a great business case, but just long enough that the steps add up. The first temple was the Engaku-Ji, which was a lovely setting - wide open\landing areas, regal buoldings, giant stalks of bamboo but all in the backdrop of the forest. I would still rate the Hasedera slightly higher, but the Engaku-Ji was a lovely start, and its a stone's throw from the Kimi-Kamakura station (the stop right before Kamakura proper on teh JR) - a great starting point to head back towards town through the temples to come.
The next was the Meigetsu-In, which was probably the worst of the lot but still had some unique elements - it was the most built into nature (it was basically a botanical garden in small, with a temple inside), and had some lovely elements, like the classic sand and rock garden setup at its main temple area. We sadly didn't make it to the Kencho-Ji temple in time, but did make it back to the main town and the Tsurugaoka Temple complex. I forgot about this one alltogether, but it is a gerat spot. Built right off the town, its a wonderful ending spot like we used it for, as you walk through it (essentially walking in reverse to the normal direction) and it spits you out right at the Nortern edge of the pedestrian shopping village.
In the middle though you get a giant temple (granted, up a lot of steps), some really open plazas, and a graet lake that was just covered end ot end with lilypads and lotuses - a few in bloom, but all open and serene, even with a few birds milling about. It is these things that remind you just how special some of these temples are at the end of the day. Kamakura overall was just a joy throuhg all the temples, even if the shopping at the end was a relative disappointment. This is of my own making though, as I had looked up specific places to visit for souvenirs and handicrafts in all my other stops - you know, the new cities, but didn't for my time in Tokyo. In the end, I did find a nice magnet (weirdly got into the magnet game the last few years, but my rule is it has to be of a secondary city), but also found time to go to a beautiful craft brewery called BTaps that sits a block away from the station, overlooking the pedestrian shopping village. The beers were good, cold and exotic and a lovely way to end a lovely day in Kamakura.
The day itself wasn't over - if anything, the main event was to come, as I was taking my parents out to Sushi M, an Omakase Sushi spot that I went to last time in Tokyo. Tis was their combined Father's Day and Mom's Bday (July 19) gift, made more interesting because heretofore my Mom doesn't eat sushi. She really never has, genearlly doesn't like raw food. Now, this seems to be mostly because she hasn't tried it, but it was an aversion that was going to be tested.
In the end, she had all of it , without nary an averse reaction. There was a bit of me fearing that she would throw up or something. But instead, she enjoyed it. Understandably the rawest, fattiest pieces she didn't like as much (for instance fatty tuna), which makes sense for someone who has never had sushi before, but of course those are also the best pieces. Sushi M also has about five or six cooked preparations thrown in throughout the meal taht are all as excellent as the sushi, and of coruse there is a great calm in just watching the sushi master do his thing. In the end, she liked it, my dad loved it, I loved it, and we had a great time.
From there, they went back to the AirBNB, and I checked off the last remaining cocktail bar I hadn't done previously, going to The Bellwood, which is jsut as lovely this time as last, still in its speakeasy, 1920s decor and clothing, but the cocktails themselves were more innovative, more interesting than them reliving old 1920s classics last time. I also had a long chat with the lead bartender, who convinced me to visit his favorite music bar, Bar Davy, which was a few blocks away, and that too was graet - a bit more rock and roll and less polished than the peerless Bar Fortified I went to yesterday, but given that the Music Bar concept is the one throughline of basically all Japan, I better get used to and love the range of these places as well. If anything, the music aspect of Bar Davy was even better than it was yesterday, and for what amounted to the last thing I did in Tokyo, it was a great way to end my time.
