Konnichiwa! At the moment I am in Japan, spending a couple of weeks with my boyfriend Tony, who moved here in April. He's had a few days off work and we've been exploring Yokohama and Kamakura, about an hour outside Tokyo. It's an exhilarating, overwhelming country, and I'm not really sure where to start in describing it!
A Mt. Fuji themed miniature garden in Yokohama!
We visited Yokohama on Sunday, thinking it would be a good idea to go for a run, and then walk around Yamashita Park on the waterfront. It was almost 30 degrees, so the run was very hard work! We rewarded ourselves afterwards with some interesting food from a street food market, a kind of deep fried creamy crab paste with tomato sauce. Sounds weird. It was weird.
Throughout the Yokohama bay area at the moment is the Yokohama Garden Necklace, a festival of flowers and colour, and it is completely stunning. Blooms everywhere you look! It smells wonderful too.
On Monday we visited Kamakura, a former capital of Japan. In the 12th - 14th centuries it was the home to the Shogunate and the centre of political Japan. It's a complete contrast to the crowded, concrete jungle of Yokohama and Tokyo! There were trees, yay, and wooden buildings, wowee! We travelled there on the Enoshima Electric Railway, which may just be the cutest train I've ever seen.
The entrance to Hase-dera Buddhist temple.
The giant Buddha at Kotoku-in
This buddha at Kotoku-in temple was cast in the 13th century (how!?), and has survived the building it was housed in, as well as numerous major earthquakes and tsunamis. It's an incredibly imposing statue, just imagine how impressive that would be in 1252! There are countless other temples in Kamakura city, and we'll definitely be making a return trip some time to see more.
Have you been to Yokohama or Kamakura, or anywhere else wonderful in Japan? If you have any travel tips, I'd love to hear them!
Kate x