Japan tour 2025: Day 15 Kamakura

 

By the numbers

25,271 steps

19.43 kms

 

Level of Chaos: Cant find a garbage bin

 

Shimbashi station

The day had come that I had planned to visit Kamakura around an hour from Tokyo. I had originally planned to get the earliest possible train out of the city thinking it would be overly crowded. Then I thought that I actually need to sleep or else I wouldn’t be in a good condition to be on the ball. Then I realised since I already had paid for my breakfast, then I should actually grab it to go. I did that and drank my coffee on the way to the station. I had my breakfast in my bag until I got all the way to Kamakura before eating it. I couldn’t exactly eat it on the train as there was no room to do so. It had gotten warm when I arrived so I found a shady seat. The only problem I had was that I could not find a bin, but luckily I had a decent sized backpack on me so it would end up sticking with me all day.  If it wasn’t so hot, I might have explored a little bit more, but I think I just have to pace myself or else something will happen.

 

I wasn’t sure where I should go at first, but I decided to wander up the road to the big temple as it is something people do. I think it is called Hasedera temple, there is a really long street to the temple, and I had actually taken one of the side streets on the way up. I could really feel the heat of the day starting to work its magic. I did walk up the stairs to the temple and then ended up back down the bottom as the crowds started to turn up. I walked back down the avenue to the train station. Outside of the main station was a little station that had the electric railway for the local area and the trains were photogenic as the train spotters seem to like these trains. I found the station stamps, there were 4 to get and I think I ended up with three of them. The plan with the train was to catch it to Enoshima, and then catch the monorail to Ofuna, which is two stops away from Kamakura. I stopped at Hase station, which had heaps of people waiting on the platform and wandered to the beach and then returned after visiting the giant Buddha statue that had survived a tidal wave and an earthquake. I decided to walk between two stations and that ended up being further along as I seen the people waiting, although some could have just been waiting for the train to go past as well. I probably should have caught the train because of the heat, but I thought I could go on. On the way to Enoshima the train goes along the middle of the road a little like Kawakawa in New Zealand. There were several places I could camp to take shots of the train coming and going so I am happy to have that.

From Enoshima, I was going to take the monorail to Ofuna. It was basically an upside down train as the rails were above the vehicle and not below. It made for a great view of the surrounding area. I wasn’t sure if I could pay for the monorail with my IC card and turns out I could, which does pretty much work out. It was close to 3pm when I got into Enoshima and I had been travelling since the morning. I was happy to be sitting down, though I got a seat on the train right away when I caught it back to Tokyo station. I had caught it from another station in the morning, but I wanted to checkout character street, which was all about things from Tv shows like Pokémon, or even Snoopy. Some were a little expensive, but I don’t know if that was because I was in the train station. I did however go looking for a bin to put my rubbish and still couldn’t find one. I ended up bringing it home with me. I did instead find the manners posters outside one of the Shinkansen entry points that were meant to be at all stations by now, some of them should at least be common sense. It took me a while to try and find some food that I wanted to take away as I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I settled for a curry that I put in my bag and headed to the train. It was strange as there were parts of the station you would walk through and it would be really warm.