justin in taiwan: Japan Day 3: Kouichi, Chiyaki, Kamakura, and Yokohama

We awoke early to meet another relative, Kouichi, in Ofuna, which is close to Yokohama. Kouichi is a pretty tall guy for a Japanese! He is well over 6 feet tall. I guess I am not surprised though because my grandma told me her side of the family (Taira) were tall.

We then all went together to Kamakura, the first samurai capital of Japan. It is a small place with large hills on 3 sides and then on the fought side is a beach and bay. Here we also met up with Kouichi's daughter Chiyaki. Together we visited our first big Japanese buddha.

Next we went to a Japanese temple garden on the side of a hill. It was beautifully landscaped and the temples nestled among the trees looked like postcard. We even went inside a small cave shrine.

Next we had some local freshly made soba in a small tightly packed restaurant. We had a wonderful lunch with delicious food while Kouichi told us the story of our family ancestors. The abridged version of the story is that back in the day there were 2 main samurai clans. The Taira (my family) and the Minamoto. These two clans protected the emperor. Then there was a big war between the two clans and the Taira lost and so they were all killed except a few of the highest ranking Taira family who escaped to the south of Japan. These samurai who escaped are my ancestors. Cool!

After lunch we went to another large temple which had a Taira pond and a Minamoto pond. Because Minamoto won the battle, their pond was much fancied. Lol. After the temple we had our fortunes told by shaking a box and pulling out a stick with a fortune number on it. Eliza's was good, but mine was bad so I tied the fortune to this wall that was full of other fortunes.

Taira Pond

Next was a walk down one of the main streets in Kamakura, that was lined with cherry trees. Chiyaki spotted a soft cream store so we stopped and had matcha green tea and purple sweet potato twist cones. Wow so tasty and refreshingly cool.

Next was a walk down a long street filled with little stores and eateries. We tried lots of samples including mochi on a stick and fresh sukemono and fresh sembe. There was even a totoro shop!

After this we headed to Yokohama to see their sea wall/park area and then went to their Chinatown. The biggest one in the world apparently. It was so clean and nothing like the markets I'd seen in Taiwan and China. We ate a nice diner at a Chinese restaurant and said our goodbyes at the subway station.