Kamakura was one of Zoey's favorite places when she visited Japan. Kamakura is a part of the Kanagawa Prefecture of Japan. It's pretty easily accessible by the JR train from Tokyo, and the sites we visited were within walking distance of the train stop.
The first place that we went to is a temple called Kotokuin. It hosts "The Great Buddha," which is the second-largest monumental Buddha in Japan. The Buddha is outdoors and made of bronze; it is 13.35 meters tall and weights 121 tons. Originally, it was built inside of a temple in 1252 A.D., but the temple was swept away by a tidal wave in 1498. Later on, the Buddha was worked on so that its body could move freely on the base so as not to be damaged in the case of an earthquake.
We then headed over to Hasedera, a temple on the hillside in Kamakura. The temple has multiple levels, and a different feel to each area. At the bottom level there are a bunch of bamboo fountains that feed water into moss-lined reflecting pools. There's also a cave carved into the side of the hill as well, and we were able to go inside and see all kinds of engravings.
Up at the top of the hill, there is a beautiful view point where we could see almost all of Kamakura.
This is the temple at the top of the hill. It was pretty big, and had all kinds of rooms with candles, incense, etc. Everything was in Japanese, so I don't have too much information on the actual temple.
This is called a Kyozou; inside is a rotating book rack called a rinzo, that holds important Buddhist sutras for the temple. Supposedly if you rotate the rinzo, you can earn the same merit as from reading all of the sutras. Dad tried it, but I didn't notice too much of a difference in his spirituality...
Next, we went out for lunch at a soba place. The soba was okay, but it was just nothing like the place that we had gone out to with Katsumi. I ordered hot soba (in soup) with a yam, which I thought was a tempura yam like we get in the States, but actually the yams that they put in the soup end up being a goupy white thing. It wasn't bad, just not great either.
In Japan, the schoolkids are all required to learn English, but it's really hard for them to find people to practice with. We learned that often, they are sent to major tourist attractions with a list of questions to ask foreigners. The kids would look at me, get confused, look at Dad (for those of you who don't know, he's obviously white), and then get really excited. Most of them had to ask us where we were from, what we were visiting, etc. There was one group of girls that started screaming and wanted to take a picture of us when they found out that we were from California.
After we walked around for a while and saw some lacquerwear (that's what Kamakura is famous for aside from the shrines), we headed back on the train to meet Katsumi, who was taking us out for a special dinner that night.
Before we met up with Katsumi, though, we had some time and Dad showed me around a ritzy Japanese department store. In the basements of most of the department stores, they have really nice specialty food shops. To give you an example of the great prices in Japan, check this out:
For 12 fresh strawberries, they charged 2800 yen, which is equivalent to about $25. For one of those cantaloupes, it was 5000 yen, which is about $45!
After that fun experience, we found Katsumi at Tokyo Station and walked over to a really famous yakitori place. Isehiro serves solely Yakitori, and is supposed to be a popular place for Japanese businessmen to take guests (as we found out, the Western guests often don't understand that they need to take off their shoes!).
Here is the website for the location that we went to. On the main page, they talk about the amazing quality of the ingredients they use:
http://www.gnavi.co.jp/gn/en/g133300h.htm.We were able to sit at the bar right in front of the chef. It's a really small bar with just enough room for four people. Katsumi had to reserve it a month before we flew in! It was so neat because we got to sit and watch the chef cook, and all of our food was fresh off of the grill.
Yakitori is basically chicken skewers, utilizing all parts of the chicken. Isehiro is famous because they use the best quality Japanese coals and get fresh chicken from their own farms. Since they know how fresh the chicken is, it's often undercooked. I'd never had undercooked chicken before, but it was really good. Before the chicken is cooked, it's dipped in yakitori sauce. In the States, it usually tastes the same as teriyaki sauce. In Japan, the sauce is smoky, understated and not overly sweet. It's also a lot less viscous. Katsumi said that during the war, the one thing that a lot of families saved was their yakitori sauce because it lasts for hundreds of years.
Another neat thing was that the restaurant had patented a fork-like device that is meant to push the chicken off of the skewer onto the plate, and then eaten. It was pretty neat and kept me from stabbing the inside of my mouth with the skewer.
We had the 9 course meal:
(1) Bits of chicken breast barbecued with salt and served with wasabi, (2) Chicken livers cooked in yakitori sauce, (3) Chicken gizzards barbecued with salt, (4) Chicken thighs sliced thin with green onions, mushrooms and green peppers, (5) Chicken balls made of ground chicken meat with flax seeds, barbecued with salt, (6) Chicken skin, (7) Chicken thighs cut in chunks with green onions and green peppers, (8) Duck meat chunks barbecued with salt, (9) Chicken Soup, pickled cucumber, and organic vegetables, (10) Chicken wing barbecued with salt.
I wasn't the biggest fan in the world of the gizzards, but other than that this place was awesome, even just for the experience of getting to watch how precise they are about cooking. We learned that in order to be a yakitori chef, one needs to work his way up from making the skewers all day, running food to customers, refilling the coals, and then finally cooking.
It doesn't look like the most filling meal, but I was stuffed afterwards, and really tired from walking around all day. Speaking of which, this was a really long day to chronicle on here and I'm tired. Til next time.
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