Day 92-93 Japan’s Surf Mecca and The Open Air Buddha of Kamakura

Feb 29 • Blog • 2214 Views • 4 Comments

From Okinawa all the way to the center area of Japan, I’d seen many surfers along the coast. This Shonan Beach in Chigasaki is famous as the surf mecca of Japan with the long sandy beach accompanied by a walking / cycling road. I caught so many bicycles with a surfboard holder, parked right by the beach.

Dare I say… it’s like the less crazy version of Venice Beach in Los Angeles.

There is a small island by this beach called, Enoshima. You can see it on the right in the above photo.

I cycled over the bridge, and it said, “Welcome to Enoshima.”

Enoshima Shrine was what was bringing people to the island. There were also many food vendors leading up to the shrine.

Paddle surfers, wind surfers, internet surfers (namely, me), they were all there.

Shirasu don, baby anchovy bowl, was the local lunch of the day. Remember, I’d had the raw one a few days earlier? This one was boiled. The ocean lets us play and gives us good food. How good is she?

This area, south of Tokyo, is also very well known for a number of cultural treasures including the large statue of Buddha at Kotokuin Temple in Kamakura. This is where the government seat was located for the Kamakura Bakufu between the 12th and 14th centuries. Bakufu, also known as shogunate, refers to the military government that existed in Japan. Although the functions and structure differed according to the time in history, the bakufu basically controlled the feudal lords nationwide by assigning them fiefs and requiring loyalty to the shogun in return.

Apparently this Buddha was first built in its own hall, but it was destroyed by natural disasters twice, and they decided to leave it in the open air. I thought it was nice this way with the big sky in the background.

Yes, we respect Buddha in Japan. Yes, we also treasure Hello Kitty. (So do many around the world, it seems.) This is what happens in this country to show our love and respect for the two. The thing about it is that no one gets offended by it. I personally think that Buddha probably finds this funny too. After all, he’s a big man, especially here in Kamakura.

As I’ve been saying all this time in my blog, cycling and seeing Japan was amazing in more ways than just sightseeing and eating. When I cycled into Tokyo, a stranger in a white van drove along with me, trying to get my attention. He asked me to stop. I was slightly uncomfortable with that since I’d entered the more crowded metropolitan area. But, what happened after was nothing like what I thought it might be.

An older man introduced himself and said he’d cycled Japan when he was in his youth. He gave me words of encouragement with a big smile and enthusiasm, then drove off. I kept cycling and found his van again a few hundred meters later. He was standing by the van with a nicely wrapped small box in his hand. I said hello again. He handed me the box, saying this was very good and wanted me to have it. He drove off again, waving his hand. It was a box of really good rice crackers wrapped in nori (so good they were addictive!) called, Daishimaki. It must have been a gift for someone else, but he ended up giving it to me on the road.

Just when I thought that a big city like Tokyo could be a hassle to cycle in with my loaded bike, this happened. I realized that it wasn’t by chance that something this nice happened here. I’d encountered people’s kindness way too many times to summarize it just a luck. It was consistently floating around in the air throughout Japan that it was almost harder to miss than encountering. It was the hello, the waving hands, the smiles (and the occasional food offering). All of those brightened my day even when I was out of sorts in my head. Cycling felt as if it was generating something – something invisibly good.

This post is also available in: Japanese

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