On the 30th, Me and Nat had planned a day trip out to nearby Kamakura and then to Yokohama. Kamakura is one of the ancient capitals of Japan and so it's littered with history and temples. Yokohama, Japan's 2nd largest city, is famous for being one of the great international ports and thus contains Japan's most famous Chinatown. So, we all tried to get up early once again to take advantage of some truly amazing weather. Although the train ride was long, I think everyone enjoyed it. Strangely, one of the highlights of the trip finding a touchscreen vending machine. I can't describe it except that it was straight out of Japan (oh wait). Hopefully, Matt will post a video of it. Our first stop in Kamakura was the lovely Hasedera Temple. This one was really picturesque. Nestled on a hill, it offered a breathtaking Mediterranean-esque view of Kamakura. Combined with the clear blue skies, I think it had to be one of the nice temples I've been to. I think that's saying a lot. The temple also had an enormous wooden Buddha and a very interesting grotto for visitors to make their way through. We had a good time taking in the beauty of Japanese architecture. After a quick convenient store lunch (essential to any trip to Japan), we made our way to Kamakura's famous bronze cast Buddha statue. It's an enormous Buddha and is the second largest of it's kind in Japan. I thought that it was pretty awesome and you could even go inside to see the details of it's inner workings. I think the rest of the group was a bit underwhelmed by it however in that there were a lot of people there and we had just seen another giant Buddha statue in the previous temple. But hey, that's the way it goes in Japan. On way back to the station, we picked up some delicious craft beer and then headed out to Yokohama.
In Yokohama, some people recommended that we go to the Ramen museum so we headed there. Yokohama doesn't really impress much in all honesty. It seems small and lacking in vitality, especially in comparison to nearby Tokyo. It felt like Houston's downtown...lacking. Even the Ramen museum seemed to be crappy. Upon entering, we were greeted with an all Japanese museum and a space that consisted mostly of an RC car race track and model cars on the walls. Fortunately, after our initial disappointment, we made our way downstairs to the real highlight of the museum. Downstairs consisted of a pretty awesome recreation of post war Tokyo, replete with little shops and artifacts. It was a very faithful and fun recreation, and each area was basically a Ramen restaurant. We decided that it was like Fun Plex, but more awesome. We even got to watch a pair of possibly gay juggler's do a very impressive..well juggling act. That was definitely the highlight but instead of eating Ramen at the Ramen museum like we should've, we decided to go get some Chinese food in Chinatown. My intention was for us to eat some authentic Japanese style Chinese food but I don't think it worked out the way I had planned. We should've looked up some recommendations. We got to the area, which was a hassle to get to, and explored the rather impressive Chinatown. Everything was brightly colored and would've been really nice to explore if it wasn't really late and if we weren't really hungry. After a few minutes of walking, some Chinese lady sold us on a 90 minute all you can eat affair for 18 bucks. Everyone agreed and we all made our way upstairs and ordered about 30 things in the first 5 minutes. I think that that pissed off the Chinese ladies that we were working there and they proceeded to give us some god awful service. But hey, you said all you can eat! It didn't help that the food was mediocre and that we ordered liver on accident. It all just reaffirmed my belief is the Denny' s of world cuisine. "Hey, we have meat...let's add grease and MSG!"
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