So far we have recapped my travel to Japan and all of the things we did in the city of Tokyo. Sunday was the first day we ventured outside the city, and it is hands down my favorite day of the entire trip.

Meghan and I really wanted to get to Kamakura, which is home to the tallest Buddha in Japan and many other ancient shrines and temples. Kamakura is about an hour south of Tokyo by subway/JR train so we knew we were going to have a commuting adventure on our hands.



By Sunday, we felt pretty comfortable with the Tokyo subway. We'd used it Friday and Saturday to get all over Tokyo, but we hadn't had to figure out the JR trains yet. If you're familiar with the DC metro, the closest comparison I can make is that the Tokyo metro is most like the DC Metro (though far superior in every way possible) and the JR trains are similar to the MARC or VRE trains.

Except unlike the MARC or VRE trains which pull into DC at one or two major stops, the different JR trains and lines stop all over Tokyo. So Meghan and I spent a lot of time Saturday night mapping out which subway lines we needed to take to connect to the JR train that would take us to Kamakura.

Come Sunday morning, navigating the whole thing was surprisingly easy. So easy in fact that while we were riding the JR train to Kamakura, we decided to throw in an extra side trip to Yokohama, the second largest city in Japan with it's own subway system.

But let me stop bragging about how much Meghan and I crushed it while navigating Japan's public transportation and actually get into the details of Kamakura.



When we got off the JR train in Kamakura, we had the option of taking a local train to the site of the Great Buddha or walking about a mile or so to get there. Meghan and I are big believers that walking is a great way to see a new place, so we opted for the walk, and I'm really glad we did.

The journey to the Buddha was first off, really clearly marked, and second was pretty -- taking us down lots of little side streets. Being in Kamakura was such a change of pace from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. It was so nice to be in a place where things moved a little bit slower.



As we got closer to the Buddha, Meghan could see its head sticking up above all the surrounding houses and started giggling like a small child with excitement.

Seeing the Buddha was incredibly cool. I mean the statue was huge.



You could pay an extra 20 yen (which in U.S. currency is no joke less than 20 cents) to go inside the Buddha's belly. Obviously we did that too.

The inside of the statue wasn't very picturesque. I snapped this one just so you could get a sense of what it looked like, but for such a big statue, the inside area was actually fairly small.



But there was some cool history to read on how the Buddha was constructed many years ago. It amazes me that so many of the shrines and temples we saw on this trip, with their beautiful construction and intricate details, were mainly built centuries ago without all the modern technologies we have today.

After exploring the inside of Buddha's belly, we wandered down the street to one of the more well-known temples in the area -- the Hasedera Temple. This ended up being my favorite stop on the entire trip.



This temple was stunningly gorgeous. From the minute you walked in, it was like being swept into another world.



There were gorgeous ponds right past the entrance, full of huge fish.



Walking up the first set of stairs took you to a shrine where people could light candles and make offerings.



Up another set of stairs was the main temple, which houses a 30-foot tall statue of Kannon, with 11 heads. It was seriously incredible to see, but you weren't allowed to take pictures in the shrine, so I don't have anything to show you.

What I do have to show you are some of the stunning views of the Japanese coastline from the lookout point at the shrine. These temples sit minutes away from the water and offered some incredible views.









Meghan and I were excited to get down to the beach and put our feet in the sand, but first we stopped in the caves at the temple to see buddhas carved into the stone walls with candles all around them.



The caves were pretty low at parts and required some major ducking to get through, but it was really cool to see.

So after wrapping up our temples adventures, we walked down to the beach. It was a pretty warm day outside and there were tons of surfers and kids playing in and along the water.



Meghan and I didn't take our shoes off, but we did put our hands in the ocean.

Check out my Japanese running shoes on the Japanese beach.



We strolled back to the main downtown area and hit up some conveyer belt sushi for lunch. When I've done this style sushi in DC, I can usually read the menu and tell what things are. Not so much at this place. So it was an adventure as I randomly grabbed plates of raw fish and hoped for the best. (I was mainly trying to find plates of tuna and salmon since I know I can handle that).



Our last stop in Kamakura was to check out a Zen Buddhist temple.



We'd seen so many different kinds of temples on this trip that we wanted to see if the zen shrines were any different. Overall, to our uneducated eye, we didn't see any major differences, but when we were there something was going on where some girls were being honored right out front.



They were in gorgeous kimonos and all wearing sashes of some sort that of course Meghan and I couldn't read and there were tons of photographers taking pictures and people clapping and cheering for them.



As we hustled back to the train station to catch our train to Yokohama, Meghan and I walked past this tiny Catholic church off the main road. We'd seen so many temples and shrines on this trip that we were kind of surprised to pass right by a Catholic church. We stopped to take a picture, but didn't have time to go inside or else we would have missed our train.





And I think that's where I'm going to wrap up this blog post. When I started writing I had every intention of including our Yokohama adventures in this post, but it's getting ridiculously long, so I'll save it for tomorrow.

I'll also include our steps/mileage for the day and the daily Snapchat in that post, since it's all from Sunday's adventures.