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Friends and Large Buddhas

The day after my lovely Ghibli adventure, I was invited to chill for a bit at one of my friend's house. It was the first time I had been to someone else's place since everyone is usually super busy with club and what not, and if we did hang out it was someplace in Tokyo. So I was rather excited. I took the train to her house, and then we took purikura (what else) at her home station, then did normal girl hanging-out stuff. Ate lunch, listened to music, watched a movie...just generally talked. It was a lot of fun.


I also met her Mom and older sister, who were both very nice. Had a blast using google earth to show them my house and around my neighborhood.

Then the day after that I got up at six thirty in the morning to take two hours--TWO HOURS!--worth of trains to Kamakura to hang out with Troy. (TWO HOURS. GAH). I had my first experience with Tokyo rush-hour trains. Two words: they suck. We were all packed like sardines into that train. I had a guy in my face and a guy right up on my ass (yes, ass, it was like that) and fortunently I only had to go a few stops like that. Singularly unpleasant.

But putting that aside, Kamakura was quite lovely.
Went to a shrine and prayed, then went into the Kamakura museum which had a bunch of old religious statues and some prints. (Unfortunently, no photos allowed.)

Then we walked down to the beach and strolled along, eating Baskin Robins ice cream (they call it 31 here).
I'm a sucker for that sky.

Then we took another short train ride to another part of Kamakura where we went to see Daibutsu, or "Giand Buddha".



Construction began in 1252, and it's 11.3m tall (without the pedestal). It weighs 121tons. You could go inside of it too and look at how it was put together. We hung around Kamakura a little more, then took the train partially back to Yokohama where we had a lot of fun in purikura *happy grin*. Lots of Kiwi love for me!

And that was the end of my two days of friendship fun! I can't believe break is almost over. And that I'm down to 28 days before I come home. When I say it that way, it doesn't sound like such a long time after all.
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