ONE special shrine?

I think not. Maybe 100, maybe more. Kamakura was yet another mind blow, I got the real deal, mountains, shrines, temples, cemeteries, and best of all BAMBOO. It bamboozles me! I am so ignorant, but fortunately I had the sense to take an overnight bag, but I would need a week at least to see all the good things around there.

Even the drink machines have art in them.
I arrived in the morning with thousands of other colour lovers, and caught a bus from the station to somewhere, I never found the temple I went there for, because before I knew it, I was climbing a mountain, and then another and another and another. The day was spent lost, wandering through still forests, and admiring amazing caves full of sacred rocks and carvings, and wow. It just kept going on and on. I had fortunately bought an apple and some seeds with me, and monk like, munched on these, and they were truly the most delicious things I had ever eaten. I was so high, high up and exultant, eyes very wide.

The day was going quickly and I found more than I could have hoped for, having trusted that being lost was part of the process, but found a road down, and there was a sign for a shrine; Zeniarai Benzaiten Shrine, I thought oh goody, a Zen shrine. You entered through a tunnel carved into solid rock and the place was full of incense smoke and dark pools of water, filled by natural waterfalls. I wandered around, and in the back found the real excitement. In a cave hung with paper cranes, queues of people with baskets crouching by troughs washing their money in the water. So strange, so much enthusiasm and delight. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing, and there was a sign "Dries naturally", outside people were sitting waiting for this to happen.
Made my way back to town and found a small hotel to stay. The woman at the Tourist Info place told me about a temple in the next town that had special night lights, so after dropping off my bags I got the tram to Hase. I am a sucker for the lights, as are many, and had to race around, which is not my want. I find I always make a friend in these sorts of places, as so many people are trying to take photographs, and often I see people struggling to get a photo of themselves, so I offer to take one, and then they offer to take one of me, and so on.


It was very very beautiful at Hasedera temple there, and I could see the ocean below, so made my way down there afterwards, and wandered on the dark sand smelling the Pacific, but it smelt different. Surprised some lovers with my loud exultation, and realised this was the first couple I have seen actually in an embrace. People here do no more than delicately hold hands. A few times that day I came across single men in lonely places, and wondered about gay beats, I mean, Sydney is one huge gay beat, and yet here I haven't caught a whiff of any untoward business. Very hetero where I have been.
Anyway, got the tram back, bought some shochu and wandered up the main avenue towards the big temple in town. Its nice at night, the crowds desert, and the place was all my own, bar some priests in their good-looking robes, hurrying and worrying. Very lovely, yet I felt empty and alone.

And hungry! Found a quiet sushi restaurant, where I ordered some beautiful sushi. Got to talking to one of the chefs who said he caught his own fish, and then proceeded to make me a piece of sushi with said fish. Wonderful, horse mackerel, very big fish, very tasty. I was stuffed by then, and more than wobbly, every ounce of me was crying for bed, so I paid and made a quick exit. I must have said something funny, because when I slid the door shut I heard them break into great peals of hilarious laughter. I am glad to have entertained them, they fed me well.
Slept wonderfully, though short, and got up early and went straight to the bamboo temple, as it is known. Hokokuji Temple was possibly the most beautiful one I have seen yet, as the priests care for a bamboo forest, which you can walk through. Each step was taken slowly and with great aplomb.
It felt monumental there, and my status was "heart soars", indeed drinking whisked green tea in the tea house, gazing at the gardens around me, made me teary with bliss.




I was refreshed and revived so hit that part of town, wandering here and climbing there, seeing more and more. The standout piece that afternoon was an enormous tree in one garden. When I asked a fellow how old it was (there was a sign in Japanese below it), he didn't know so went and asked at the desk, 900 years old! The oldest tree I think I have ever seen, such a girth! I felt positively skinny next to it.
I also felt that age myself by then so called it a day, and made my way back to the city. Only one hour away, and so worth it. As soon as I got back to Shinjuku and got stepped on, and my wrist got knocked hard by someone very bony, I knew I had done the right thing by getting out.