Kamakura

I got off the sleeper bus in Tokyo at around 6:00 in the morning.

I've used my deductive reasoning since then to determine this was about the time the case opened for "Philip and the case for the missing Sherlock Holmes book" began...

I caught the subway to the tsukiji fish market. While it was interesting to watch a man render a 5 foot Tuna with a band saw, to me it looked like a fish warehouse and market slapped together. I think I'll rack this one up along with Kobe beef...legendary, but not worth the hype.

I caught a subway out to Kamakura. This yet another of Japan's former capitals. Kamakura was where the idea for the shogun came from. Around 800 years ago, the military head of government (shogun) separated from the religious and state head of the government government (emperor).

I contains Japan's largest sitting Buddha. While I was definitely on Buddha overload at this point, the ability to go inside and look how it was put together was really cool.

The cute little statue is part of a much larger shire, filled with lots other cute little statues...which is all fine and dandy...until I read that the temple is dedicated to souls of the miscarried children. At which point, the cute little statues became kind of sad too.

I hiked around in the lush hills surrounding this seaside town, and reached a level of tranquility that can old come from walking in Japan for 20 minutes and having not seen a vending machine...

I managed to find a shrine called zeniarai-benten which due to its triforce shaped mono glyphs etched everywhere and me reminiscing to all those wasted hours playing The Legend of Zelda.

Afterwards, I headed back to Tokyo to catch some Zs on a real bed....well floor pad...despite the name...a sleeper bus is notoriously hard to get a good nights sleep in.