Big Buddha

I wrote this post yesterday but blogger isn't letting me upload pictures at the moment. Anyone else having troubles with it? It won't even bring up the 'browse' bar. Please ignore where it says {pictures}, that was my way of reminding myself where they were going. Hopefully I can post them soon!!

Guess I should post about our afternoon down to Kamakura before I forgot completely. We had planned to go down there for our field trip day in our ICR class, but instead had to detour to the vet. Since we are trying to save money right now so we can furnish our whole apartment with new stuff we aren't doing any big trips just yet. (I'm still trying to think of something to go see/do tomorrow!)

We had a pretty lazy morning before we actually got on our way. It was a nice day out so we decided to walk to the train station instead of catching the bus. Found out it is 2.4 miles from our front door to the train station :]

We had our first encounter with a drunk guy on the train... that was interesting!

When we actually got to Kamakura we were confused on where the Buddha was. Come to find out you get on this old two car train that takes you along the water. It was cramped but super cute! And much different from a normal train ride with local Japanese since most people were tourist. Our plan once we got off at the Buddha was to find food first since we were both getting hungry. We figured we'd have no problem since it's a tourist destination. Well we were wrong! All we could find was desserts. I had no idea ice cream was going to be the main attraction. We did find a few places that had actual food but it was either not very appealing looking (I was in the mood for sushi!) or way to price gouged.

Since we found the Buddha before food we decided to hold off for a bit and enjoy it all.

I threw my Yen in (Frank was carrying my bag since I had the camera so I asked him to get me some coins from my coin purse. If I remember correctly he gave me a 1 Yen coin ha. I was thinking more of a 500 Yen coin for good luck!) and said my prayer to the Buddha :]

 

We walked around the little garden area taking pictures then went on our way for either food or a temple. We did come up to a temple near the Buddha but decided not to go in since it cost more. I just added it as a mental note for when we bring visitors there.

At this point it was around 3:00 and we knew it would be getting dark soon so we walked down to the water to take a few more pictures and then grab a snack. Once we figured we wouldn't be finding much for food we decided on a snack to hold us over until we got back to our station.

What's funny to me is that we ended up at a Hawaiian shop. I'm not a fan of donuts but they had malasadas which apparently are Hawaiian donuts (never heard of them). They looked pretty tasty so I figured since we had walked so much that day why not try them. Oh they were heavenly! Frank got a chocolate

and I got a Cinnamon and sugar malasada.

If you ever go to see the Big Buddha you must stop at cafe Hula!

On our way back we decided to go the long way on the little train so we could see more of the water front towns. They were so cute! I can't wait to go spend a day down there exploring more once spring comes around :]

 

 

Once we got back to our area we were trying to figure out what we wanted to eat. I was still wanting sushi but Frank isn't a huge fan of it. He was nice and decided to give it a try so we stopped off at the sushi go-round near base (or as I like to call them, fast food sushi ha). It was decent, we got 8 plates for under 1000 Yen so I was pretty happy. The best part of all was seeing some of the American/Japanese options they had. Neither of us tried it but they had what looked like a mayo/corn mixture in a sushi roll and a fried chicken sushi roll ha! Frank tried that one and said it wasn't bad. (He did like what he had! Anything that isn't raw.)

All in all it was a fun day! I was more than ready to get home and warm up :]