Fun in Kamakura.

This past weekend Tony had 4 days off, so we decided to head out and see some of the sights around Tokyo.  Saturday morning we got on the train and headed about an hour south of Tokyo to Kamakura.  According to Wikipedia, Kamakura was the 4th largest city in the world in  about 1200 AD with a population of 200,000.   Today there are about 173,000 residents-- so apparently this city has already reached its pinnacle!  It is a gorgeous place, near Mt. Fuji and right on the coast that is rich in Japanese culture.  There were literally too many temples and shrines to even think of being able to visit them all-- at least not all in one day-- so we hit the highlights.

 

The Great Buddha statue is the largest outdoor Buddha in the world.  It used to be indoors, but a typhoon wiped out the shrine it was housed in (in the 1500s) and the building was never rebuilt-- so now it's an outdoor Buddha. (Part of me thinks it's not fair to designate it as the largest outdoor Buddha when that was not its intended position.  But hey, it's been outside for 500 years, so maybe it's fair after all.)

 

This is a picture of Anthon and Tony washing their hands before they enter the sacred shrine grounds.  This was Anthon's favorite part of the visits--water play!  

 

This is a picture of about 1000 little Jizo statues (another Buddhist god that protects the unborn).  At this shrine there were literally thousands of these, ranging from 6" high to about 18" high.  It was visually pretty cool to see so many of the exact same statue everywhere you looked.

 

In the early evening, we lucked into seeing a traditional Shinto wedding.  We just happened to be in the right place at the right time and saw the procession begin.  The ceremony was outdoors in a pretty public setting, and so we kind of hung around and watched what went on.  Tony and I were so inspired that we decided to renew our own vows.  

 It was a great day.