Kamakura in a Rickshaw

Downtown Tokyo, especially Asakusa, is a little overwhelming. Wanting to make the most of our rail passes before they expired, we travelled outside of Tokyo for the day. Kamakura is a small pretty town and one of Japan's seemingly multitudinous former capitals. We made the last leg of the journey on the Enoshima Electric Railway, a historic railway that looks more like a 1930s streetcar than a train, and emerged into a busy shopping street.

Almost immediately we were approached by a friendly rickshaw driver. I mentioned we were looking for tempura and he offered to take us on a scenic tour ending up at a tempura restaurant. Although until that moment I had always thought the whole idea of tourist rickshaws was a bit silly, being hand-delivered to somewhere we might otherwise spend hours looking for seemed like a great idea. The vehicle itself was a thing of beauty: wooden framed with shiny leather tyres, a nifty retractable rain hood and inexplicably heated seats. Fuji, our driver, wore tall boots with separate toes. And a cape. Along the way he gave an interesting running commentary about the town's history. We zipped through the back streets, crossing railway lines and passing by temples, ending up at the promised tempura restaurant. The tempura was delicious.

Kamakura is famed for its Big Buddha statue. Hannah had been here on a previous occasion and was keen to revisit because 'you can see his brains'. On arrival, I found that you can indeed go right inside the enormous statue and view his hairstyle from the inside (somewhat resembling brains). From inside, you can also see the joins in the massive bronze plates used in the construction. I still can't quite get my head around the fact that such a huge, intricate and well-preserved structure was built over 700 years ago.

This picture utterly fails to convey the size of the Big Buddha.