So, I feel like I’m playing catch up with my own media files. I posted a video of Kamakura already, and I posted a video update with the overview of my weekend, but I thought that I would post a few of the best photos from my day in Kamakura/Yokohama, because slogging through all of my Flickr photos is a chore that not many people probably enjoy.
The first thing we saw in Kamakura was The Great Buddha (or the Daibatsu, as he is known in Japanese). This is a bronze statue cast in 1252 A.D. by Japanese sculptors. It stands roughly 40 feet tall, and weighs 121 tons. The first photo is one of me in front of the Daibatsu.
That’s the token tourist photos. Here are some that I tried to frame nicely. The light was really good while we were at the Daibatsu, but it quickly got cloudy for our time at Hasedera. This next one is a shot of the Daibatsu with a lantern and a flower sculpture in front of him.
This next one is a shot of just the statute itself. You can see a bowl of offerings in front of him, including fruit and flowers.
This next one is a shot of the statue from right below it. I was really glad to have my zoom lens!
This trip has made me wish I could have stolen Ed’s Nikon D40. :)
Here is a zoomed detail of the Daibatsu’s face.
Well, those are some of my Daibatsu photos. If I’ve friended you on Flickr, you can open up the large versions and see the details. If not, you can at least look at all of my photos.
Our next stop was to the Hasedera Temple, which was a rather large complex of halls that housed a few different statues. You were not supposed to photograph inside the halls, but I did capture one of the Buddha statues, which I will post. There was also an observation deck up the side of the hill where the temples were located that allowed me to get an amazing view of Sagami Bay. Some of this is shown in my video, but I have some still photos as well. Because the light was poor, it was cloudy, and the time of year meant that a lot of the trees were dead or sleeping, the photos are kind of bleak. I am going to skip over a lot of the grounds photos, which you can see by going to my flickr page or watching the video and skip straight to the good ones.
This was a decent shot of the administration building. Next to it in the background is Jikoden Hall.
As I approached the first landing up the hill, there was a rack with prayers tied to it. So, here is a photo of that.
This next shot is from one of my favorite areas of Hasedera. It was the area outside Jizo-do Hall. These hundreds (maybe thousands) of Jizo stones are said to comfort the souls of the unborn children. I love how beautiful all the little carvings were and the flowers that people placed by the statues.
I love macros, so I took some close up photos of the Jizo stones and the flowers. Here are a few.
Some of the stones were decorated with little hats and bibs… baby clothes.
More flowers…
Okay… so I finally moved on to the Yakuyoke Amida Buddha (Protector from Evil Spirits) and got a couple of sub-par photos of the golden statue. Sorry for the blur! No flash allowed.
After this, some friends from the program and I made the long walk up to the observation platform, where we got a tremendous view of Kamakura and the bay.
Here is a view of Kamakura. The clouds are finally starting to roll away.
Here is a view of the town and the bay beyond it.
People walking on the path below
A zoom in of the other side of the bay
On the way back down, I took another shot of Kannon-do and the Belfry.
And finally… here is a shot of me with the cutest Buddha ever!
So, I started the trip in front of the biggest Buddha, and ended in front of the cutest one. :)
Then we went to Yokohama for Chinese food. My photos turned out really blurry, but here are a couple of the not as offensive shots.
Here is one of the entrance gates to the Yokohama Chinatown.
The gates were very elaborate and pretty. After dinner, Justin managed to find a big Chinese temple, so we visited it before we headed back to Tokyo.
Entrance to the temple
The temple itself
I didn’t have the energy (and my fingers were completely numb) to take some really detailed and interesting photos, so maybe I will go back there during the day and capture the dragons on the roof against the blue sky.
Overall, it was a really great day. I had a lot of fun, and the cultural sights were amazing. I had a lot of fun Sunday as well. Movies, photos, and descriptions of robots and stuff to come!
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