Kamakura

This weekend, in addition to being Yom Kippur, was also my first opportunity to get out of this enormous city and into the countryside. Kamakura was the capital of Japan in the 1200s, and as such is home to many famous and beautiful temples, an enormous Buddha, and the first ocean that I have seen since my arrival (I'm used to using the ocean to give myself a sense of place, geographically and metaphysically speaking, so the three weeks I went without seeing it left me a little lost as to where I really was).

Luckily it was not all exchange students on the trip, and I had the opportunity to converse at length with a few Japanese students about life, college, the differences between America and Japan, and various other things including what they knew about Jews. (In Japanese. My head hurt after a while. I also ended up explaining to them why immigration from Mexico was such a complicated issue. In Japanese. I had to take a half an hour nap afterwards or I would have collapsed.) One girl told me she spent a year in a town in Missouri three hours outside of St. Louis. I apologized accordingly.

The latter was something I was especially interested in since I had just spent two consecutive days at the JCC Tokyo. The Japanese I talked to had little interaction with Jews, and when I asked what their image of Jews were, they said things like diligent, honest and intelligent. Not bad, not bad. One girl said that I looked like Elijah Wood from the movie version of "Everything is Illuminated," which is apparently translated into Japanese. Her mother had read it and had become interested in Jews and Israel.

By the way, I've been told that I look like Elijah Wood on two separate occasions, although on one of those occasions the individual bypassed Elijah and simply said I looked like Frodo.

But anyway, it was a holiday weekend in Japan (The autumn equinox gets its own holiday. O.k.), so it was crowded, despite the gray weather. Kamakura is very popular with Tokyoites as a day trip.

As soon as we got off of the train, I separated myself from the group of about 25 and went to check out the main attraction in central Kamakura, the Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine (built 1063). Once again I happened upon a wedding, which had a 3-piece band, adorned in purple costume, playing oddly-shaped and even odder-sounding bamboo flutes:




Some other shots from the shrine:






From there we took the creaking old half-trolley half-train to Hase, home to the Daibutsu (Big Buddha), where there was an enormous Buddha:



Me & Buddha



Buddha w/o me.

Noticing that there was indeed a beach in the area, I negotiated with the trip leader to allow me to leave the Big Buddha to it's sitting around and thinking and to go look at the ocean. It was permitted.

The beach was rather dirty and smelled of rotting wood. It was no Okinawa. It was no Moonlight for that matter (Encinitas reference. Sorry east coasters). But as I said above, I really did just need to see it. Just looking reminds me of my location; there is the ocean...here is me. There's the water, here's the land. I can picture on the map exactly where I am - the border between green and blue. Although I'd never attempt it, it makes the world seem a lot smaller when I'm reminded that I could throw off my backpack, untie my shoes, start swimming, and eventually end up back in America, or Canada, or anywhere.

Some sand made its way into my shoes, and although I itched the entire way home, I was thankful for the reminder that there is more than phone lines connecting me with home.