What a day! To make up for not being able to go far yesterday because of the rain, today we made sure to get out and enjoy some sun and sightseeing around historic Kamakura.
Before I begin today’s story though, we did have a nice lunch yesterday at a little chain restaurant/café called Komeda, that started out in Nagoya. It was an interesting place but being part of a chain means it lacks that local customer focus and care that the usual places we go have. It was also a bit indulgent as 80% of what we ordered was probably usually just dessert. As you can see in the photos below the ‘cream soda’ I ordered was actually melon soda with an entire soft serve ice cream dropped on the top. Tasty and proof that it’s good to order like a 7 year old sometimes. I did order a cheese gratin to get some savoury though. As opposed to Naoko who ordered a giant pastry with a soft serve on the top and a side of sweet red bean paste, also delicious.
Now that you’re all caught up with yesterday’s activity, on to today’s events. We headed out about 11 for the 30 minute drive to Kamakura, an amazingly old town that’s been around some 1000 years almost. Originally a capital city in about 1100 – 1330 or so, it’s still full of various temples and shrines that were commissioned by those in charge back then. It’s also got plenty of very narrow winding roads that were probably originally only required to accommodate foot traffic and the occasional rich samurai or merchant carried by in a palanquin. Now of course they take two way car traffic with scooters and bicycles zipping in and out between. Yet somehow people seem to think it’s okay to double park and force traffic to cross the centerline to get by. Fascinating craziness.
Today we visited three temples and also spent time walking the old market street. To start off our list of temples to visit was just Komiyouji and Jomyoji, but on the way to the first we realised we were about to pass Kenchyouji so we decided to stop and have a look there too. A very interesting collection of buildings set on the hillside. I’ll share the photos later on Facebook because we used the Nikon DSLR to take real decent photos for the Temple tour. I’m also not entirely sure of the history of Kenchyouji or Komiyouji. One very interesting thing about Komiyouji though was how close you could get to the actual shrine and statue inside the main building. Usually you’re kept out on the main steps balcony and just look in the door and offer your prayers in front of the statue and shrine inside. At this Temple though you could get right inside and sit on the tatami in front of the shrine enjoying the extremely relaxing atmosphere and the wafting scent of sandalwood incense.
Jomyoji is probably our favorite Temple though and features on many past photos on my Facebook. It was originally built in 1188 by a famous samurai. There were seven buildings 23 pagodas but most of these have been destroyed by fire and now there’s a main gate building, the main temple, a reception hall and warehouse, and a Kisen-an from the 1500’s where priests gathered for tea ceremonies. The Kisen-an still serves tea to visitors and is now surrounded by a perfectly manicured rock garden where you can sit to enjoy the tranquility. This tea house is our favourite and somewhere we most visit every time we come to Kamakura. That and to say hi to the possibly stray ginger cat that is always hanging around the grounds.
After visiting the temples and getting each temples calligraphy into our special note books we then drove back to the main street of Kamakura to walk the main street and then back up the very narrow shopping street that runs parallel. In the past it’s had much more of a historical feeling and lots of small unique local shops but sadly this time round the whole area started feeling much more commercial.
I guess that’s the price of popular tourism. The more commercially successful an area the more commercialised it becomes. It does seem to have increased in pace though. I imagine that once it’s all gone out won’t be coming back even after lasting for a thousand years before now.
After wandering around we then went back to the car and braved the narrow streets once more to head towards Fujisawa and a great sake shop that I visited last year when we were here in July. They have hundreds of bottles of delicious sakes from all over Japan and some especially good local brews. We spent about an hour talking with the owners wife and getting advice on the different tastes. I don’t think they’ll let us bring any more into NZ without being stiffed with a heavy duty but I’m looking forward to finding out if the tastes are really how she described them. The owner wasn’t in the shop today, but she called him while we were there and they even gave me a book that was sitting on their shelf. It’s written in English by an American living in Fujisawa who claims to have become a sake expert and the top non-Japanese authority on sake. His book promises to make me a sake expert so we’ll see how that goes and if it helps me enjoy the taste any more than I already do.
Having left no sake stone unturned and asked every question about the different kinds of sake that I could think of we made a run for home because we were almost late for dinner at our favourite French restaurant right here in Shounandai.
As far as I can recall we’ve come to this little local restaurant every time I’ve ever visited Shounandai and usually twice if we could. The place has a tiny kitchen that the owner uses to create culinary delights. His wife is usually the only other staff so she does all the waitressing and in her spare time trains to be a sommelier. The meal was 4 courses of delicious food that just can’t be described in words at this hour. See the pictures for three out of the four courses because I was so intent on starting to eat the food I didn’t get a chance to photograph the first course.
Each of those pictures doesn’t do the food any justice at all but let me ashore you it was amazingly delicious. You’ll all just have to come to Shounandai and try it for yourself.
For now though I’m going to leave you with the images and you’ll have to imagine the tastes. I’m still so full that I need to lay down now to recover haha
Oyasumi folks!