Kamakura Overnight Trip- Saturday

If anyone's wondering why I made no updates over the weekend, it's because I was far too busy taking the Culture Class trip to Kamakura. As it turns out, these culture class trip costs are included in my tuition, so of course I decided to go. We left the dorm early Saturday morning in order to go to the pre-departure lecture and find out more about the places we'd be visiting, such as the Daibutsu (Great Buddha). It was raining very slightly when we left. On the way to school, I bought a cheapo, clear umbrella at the Family Mart, because I forgot my own red umbrella in America. I'm so smart it hurts. Needless to say, it did not rain at all during the trip, so I had to carry that thing around for nothing.

Kato-sensei, who is the English support teacher, gave us a lot of historical information about Kamakura. Then she gave us pamphlets and asked us to form groups to make quick presentations on each place we would visit. The presentations were very silly and amateur, but we were all very sleepy. Jay drew many silly pictures for his group, and during my group's turn, I mostly just drew my "amazed tourist", as I named my character. However, as we were preparing for the presentation, I was threatening to randomly sing the parts I was supposed to read. I needed more coffee, seriously. 500mL of iced coffee from the konbini (convenience store) was not enough.

After the lecture, we were given time to get ourselves some lunch. A group of us went to the nearby Sukiya for the awesome beef and cheese over rice. Heck yeah! We quickly walked back to school to stuff our faced before leaving for the train. The main portion of the trip was the rapid express train from Shinjuku to Kamakura, which was about an hour. The three staff members to accompany us on this trip were Kato-sensei, Tanaka-san, and Ryuuhei-san. During the long train ride, Ryuuhei-san and Tanaka-san mostly slept. It was rather entertaining to watch Ryuuhei-san almost fall against Tanaka-san several times in his sleep, only to shift back into an upright position without waking. I could never sleep like that, I must say.

Once we arrived, we took a bus to our first destination. As a quick note, the buses in Japan are smaller, but we all fit pretty well on that first bus. The first stop for us was a beautiful bamboo garden, called Houkokuji Temple. It was one of my favorite parts of the trip. Small paths made of large rocks throughout the garden led the way between the tall bamboo stalks. We stopped to look around and snap photos constantly like the tourists that we were. It was toward the end of this almost maze-like property that we noticed a very large spiderweb with an equally large spider above us. Jess, being terrified of spiders, immediately stepped as far away as possible. Little did we know that we'd see many, many more like them throughout the entire trip.

We finished our exploration of the bamboo garden to catch another bus that would carry us to a shrine. This bus was much more crowded than before, but we somehow all still managed to fit. Almost all of us stood in a very tight line from one end to the other. I was struggling to hold my backpack in front of me when a passenger in a seat offered to hold it for me. I hardly got a chance to politely decline as she grabbed it and placed it safely on her lap. Again, we see the hospitality of the Japanese people. When the bus finally came to a stop, I took my bag back and thanked her before gladly stepping out of the congested bus and into fresher air.

The next stop was the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine, where we had the privilege of witnessing a very traditional Japanese wedding. They are less common than they used to be, but they happen relatively frequently at this shrine. By the way, I will be using the terms shrine and temple throughout this post, so for those of you who don't know, there is a big difference. There are two main religious beliefs in Japan: Shintoism and Buddhism. Shrines refer to Shintoism and temples, Buddhism.

After that, we did some shopping. I really bought like nothing, sadly. We did go to a Ghibli store, inside which there was a lot of Jiji, the cat from Kiki's Delivery, merchandise. Everything I found, though, was too expensive given the quality of the product. I wanted to buy something there for the cousin, but the one thing I thought I'd spend the money on was plastic. Were it made of metal, I would have bought it. Difficult to explain, and pictures were not allowed, but I can probably find a pic on the internet somewhere. I shall have to look at some point.

We weren't given much time for shopping before we were led off to the inn where we spent the night. It was very traditional style. Shoes came off at the door and were placed on a shelf. We were given strange shoes to wear inside; they couldn't be called slippers, but same concept I guess. We dropped our backpacks off in our rooms, which each held a different number of people. I was on the second floor in a room with Jess and Jill, a room that was somewhat westernized in that it had a wooden door. Hooray for us! A lockable door! The doors on the first floor were the paper sliding doors, of which I'm not a fan.

Anyway, down to dinner we went. Dinner was great. We did have steak, but I also ate sushi. It was really good. The tuna one was my favorite. Squid and octopus were chewier than I liked, but they didn't taste bad. I was amazed. I did not eat the sashimi or raw shrimp (the shrimp still had it's head, so it appeared to be looking at you... GROSS). I did, however, grab a nice sized bowl of rice and chow down.

Bellies filled, we returned to our room for card games until bed. The staff had already come in and set up our futons for us, which we thought was pretty cool. ^^ So Jess and I taught Jill how to play Rummy, and we played like six or seven rounds maybe using Jess' Inuyasha playing cards. Fun. At some point, Kato-sensei came in to see if we wanted to do the morning walk to the beach, and she ended up watching us finish a round. She didn't understand the game very well, but having her observe was entertaining.

The three of us decided not to go to the public bath with the other girls, because that's not our thing. However, we did wear the yukata to bed. They were kind of weird to sleep in, to be honest. First of all, I had to pull the bow to the front because I frequently switch from lying on my back to my side in my sleep. Also, it was warm, so I kept kicking the huge comforter off (only to pull it back on later because I was too cold). I did not sleep very well that night at all.

That's all for now. I'll finish it later! ^^