Kamakura trip 2009-08-22

At the end of my summer holidays I went to Kamakura, a beautiful little city at the sea, just about 1 hour south of Tokyo. The city is known as the east version of Kyoto wich means it is very traditional and includes alot of beautiful shrines and temples. Another thing Kamakura is known for is the wide beaches.

I took the Odakyu line from Shinjuku and bought a 1 day Kamakura Free Pass for only around 1400 yen. I went on a Saturday even though I was warned there would be alot of people. But it wasn’t so packed after all. I could even get a seat on the whole trip to and from Kamakura.

From Fujisawa to Kamakura I needed to change to Eoden line, wich is a tram that goes at a peaceful speed along the coast. It was a long time ago I saw the sea so I was very happy!

I was lucky that the weather was perfect even though the forecast warned of a bit rain. On the contrary it was very humid and hot. But the sea breeze made me feel really good and refreshed and with a green tea flavoured soft ice cream I couldn’t feel better. Totally different atmosphere than the dirty air and stressful life of Tokyo.

Of course you can’t get away from all the gaijin tourists wich is flooding the city (At least in the popular seasons spring and summer), so that’s little of a downer, but overall Kamakura is a very nice town wich I recommend a 1 or 2 day trip to. 1 day is probably not enough to see everything, so make sure to book a ryokan or hotel if you want to see everything. If you are just interested in the beaches and the most popular tourist spots, then 1 day is easily enough.

As they say, A picture says more than a thousand words, so here is my photo set from Flickr:

For more, please go here: http://bit.ly/gas4G
There are also a descriptions following under each picture.