Kamakura

First day of class was yesterday! I only had one class but it was very interesting (kabuki and bunraku ) except it's a double which means it's 3 hours long- and since the building is so old, so are the "desks". ahem, I mean the little rickety tables with the 5 inch bench. OW my back.
Today I had more classes though including my Japanese class- I feel like I tested into the right place- I WANNA GET TO LEARNIN SO I CAN HAS SPEAK BETTR? Except the weird thing is we're not learning any new kanji in this class! - we are responsible for learning on our own or taking a kanji class which I thought was interesting...(kanji is one of the alphabets used in Japan by the way-thousands of characters...you have to know about 3000 to be able to read a newspaper. These are the 'chinese characters' which foreigners often turn into bad tattoos....)

anyway

3 days ago, the group of Oregon kids ventured out to Kamakura with our Japanese friends.

The first stop we made there was to see the famous "Great Buddha" or Daibutsu. (Built from 1252-1262) The special thing about this giant Buddha is you can walk inside of it! Really neat and really beautiful~.

Giant straw shoes that belong to the Buddha

The idea was to make it look like they were holding it...but I may have failed portraying that.

 Here's the inside...that hole is the head:

The next stop was to eat lunch at Yuigahama beach. It was so nice! I will have to take another trip out here to go swimming (the water was pretty warm, well at least compared to Oregon beaches haha). There were a lot of surfers. 

Our last stop was to visit Enoshima (a small island connected to the beach). Walking around was fun: a lot of shops, trying lots of different types of famous snacks, and seeing a shrine.... So, prepare for pictures!

You walk down this long street of shops and then walk past the "tori", entering the shrine. In shintoism, this signifies that you are entering a new ethereal world.

When standing on the stairs and looking back towards the shops you would see this:

As you travel up you can see statues:

And guardians:

Walk up the stairs, and you will see this area, so you may cleanse your hands before praying:

Eventually you will make it to the shri-OH hey guys!

Me and Dorothy walking through the straw circle, for luck I think...?

You usually buy lucky fortunes here too. Although, not all are lucky. If they are bad fortunes, you are supposed to tie it to this fence like thing, and eventually it will be burned (hopefully along with your bad luck!)

Other shots:

 

He reminds me of Tatsu (my pug baby)

The view from up top:

You can see the beach we ate lunch at!

This little kitty crawled right into Demian's lap (one of the Oregon students). Looks can be deceiving but this kitteh could tell he is a good person.

If that's not good luck I don't know what is.

Nick and the girls

That thing Dorothy is eating is OCTOPUS. It wasn't half bad ;)

I can just picture Cristi Steiert (my friend's mom) going EWWWW

As we were leaving, the sun was setting and we saw this:

Oh Japan

And on the train home, I caught a glimpse of something else: THE GIANT KANNON I STUDIED IN MY BUDDHIST ART HISTORY CLASS LAST TERM! ughhh I will be making another trip to see it some other time. It's beautiful too!

As promised earlier, I finally got around to getting pictures on the internet from the famous photo booths known as*~* PURIKURA *~* :
Big eyes are cute in Japan...but what happens when you already have them..AHHH

I know what you're thinking...oh gawd why?

WELCOME TO OUR "VIGAN LABORATORY" ....?

until next time.