Well, I was on my own for a while, now. Chris set off first thing in the morning for a business trip in Taiwan (we messed up a little there on timing), so I was left to fend for myself in Japan! The first thing I did in the morning was attempt to figure out my Japan rail pass disaster.

Let me get you up to speed, here. If you’re at all familiar with Japan’s rail system, you’ll know that it is vast, complex, and famous for its efficiency. Most famous of all are the country’s super-fast high speed rail systems. One of the more common stretches is the train that reaches from Tokyo to Kyoto/Osaka in the western part of the country. The drive between these cities is about six hours. The flight is about an hour and a half. The “bullet train,” as they are fondly called, takes about two and a half hours. Couple this with the fact that the Tokyo airports are way out of the city (plus security and wait times), flying can take about five to seven hours from city center to city center. This makes training by far the quickest (and most comfortable) way to travel between these two urban hubs.

However, those bullet trains ain’t cheap. A one-way ticket from Tokyo to Osaka costs around $130. This makes weekly train passes seem desirable, especially considering the one-week JR pass costs about $260. It’s astronomical compared to most tourist transit passes, but then, most tourist transit passes don’t reach beyond a city’s limits, and this pass spans the entire country of Japan. There are a bunch of crazy rules that go along with this pass, though. For one, they are meant specifically for tourists, which means that Japanese residents actually aren’t even allowed to purchase a pass. The second weird rule here is that you have to buy your pass ahead of time, receive a physical voucher in the mail, and then bring that voucher to Japan to exchange it for a rail pass at a rail office. It is quite a complicated scheme.

So remember how I said I really slacked on planning for this trip? Well, even though a friend told me about the rail pass at least a month ago, I didn’t try to buy mine until I was on my bus to Vancouver, BC. The problem here is that I couldn’t exactly receive a snail mail voucher to my home address in Washington if I was already on my way out of the country. So I had the voucher shipped to Chris’s apartment in Japan and hoped against all hope that it would arrive on time.

Wednesday morning, though, while Katie and I were on our hike, Chris received a series of text messages informing him that the package was stuck at customs because the address was incomplete. So as Chris was packing to leave for Taiwan, we were quickly drafting and sending an email to Japanese customs to attempt to correct this so-called “incomplete” address by sending the exact address I had already included in my original order form. My rail voucher was now delayed at least one day past when I was hoping to receive it, but as long as I received it Thursday night, my plans would still be uninterrupted. Stay tuned on that.

Now, I wasn’t entirely sure how to spend this solo day around Tokyo, but luckily, Chris gave me a tip on an area called Kamakura and its neighboring island, Enoshima. I coupled this with my first daily itinerary taken off the internet (I would come to swear by these in the coming days), and off I went!

One of the main attractions in Kamakura was the main shopping street, and though my itinerary told me to hit this up in the middle of the day, I started here because of where my train dropped me off. There were so many stores that sold such beautiful hair pieces and tiny glass sculptures!

While I walked, I snacked on a teriyaki burger for lunch. It was so yummy and sticky.

Even yummier were these little sticky rice balls. There were many types, but I opted for the prettiest one – each rice ball was coated in a different type of sweet bean paste. Ugh. It was so delightful.

I made the silly mistake of thinking this was the famous Japanese street food called takoyaki. It was not.

This long shopping street dropped me off on a path to the Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu Shrine. Lots of Tori gates, lots of red, and lots of stairs were the themes for this shrine.

The main attractions were also surrounded by some beautiful gardens. I’m not sure why all the water here is this murky green color, but it is quite striking against the bright new green spring foliage.

After some garden explorations, I made the climb to the main shrine building.

And then I found some other, smaller shrines tucked up around this one.

I had to pass by the main shrine again on my way down, but no complaints here.

Now, here’s where I really started to deviate from my little itinerary. I was supposed to try to find my way over to Kamakura’s famous giant Buddha, but I saw that there was an intriguing-looking park that was sort of on the way. (It wasn’t really on the way in the end, and what I thought would be a fifteen minute detour ended up taking several hours! But travel’s more fun that way sometimes.) The path to the park took me winding through hot, sunny residential streets.

I peeked into gardens and yards, and when I finally made it across the train tracks, I was so thirsty I broke down and bought a grape Fanta from a vending machine.

It seriously hit the spot. So cold and bubbly. The problem is that I don’t really drink pop very often, or sweet drinks, for that matter, so after about six good gulps, I was more than satisfied and more than ready to be rid of this pop can. But I couldn’t just chuck it, for a number of reasons. Firstly, trash cans are essentially nonexistent in public spaces here (I came to find later that recycling bins are present at most vending machines), and secondly, it was so hot that I needed to take in all the liquid I could get. I sat in the shade at the entrance to a small temple and slurped on my Fanta until my breathing had ceased to be of the panting variety, watching some kids playing and an old man sketching the gate.

Then, because I am a sucker for side roads, I went in to explore the temple.

I was rewarded with some magnificent bamboo groves! So beautiful.

The bright, bright green foliage was nearly as breathtaking as the heat itself, and I was surprised to find a cemetery tucked up in the hills behind the temple.

Now, in case you’d forgotten, this was only a side trip to my side trip. The original side trip’s purpose was to find that silly park, and I still hadn’t made it there yet. I found some maps later on that made it seem as though I could have found my way there from the cemetery, but I didn’t see those paths from this end, so I backtracked all the way out and around again, then took another wrong turn, and finally found the park.

It was quite a hike up there, but I was rewarded, yet again, with some beautiful sights.

Okay, dude. There was another thing waiting for me up in that park, something that would come to be familiar on this Japan trip but which would never become welcome: tiny eye-attacking flies.

These little buggers were seriously so frustratingly obnoxious! If you’ll allow me a tangent, I’ll bring it back to the story at hand in a minute.

On a similarly hot, sunny afternoon in the mountains of France last August, my mom, sister, and I wandered past a field of cows and one of them was being plagued by full-sized flies. They were everywhere, practically coating her pure white hide to make her seem almost polka dotted, but the worst of them were on her eyes. The flies were not just near her eyes – they were literally buzzing around and sitting directly on her eyeballs. She tried to blink and scratch her head on a nearby tree to get rid of them, but the flies just came right on back. It was horrible. My sister and I were in shock, mere seconds away from vaulting over the fence to rescue this poor cow from the horrible flying monsters, but my mom explained that it was the moisture in her eyes they were after.

So here I am, trying to enjoy the beautiful views that Japan has to offer after hiking and climbing my way through the heat, and I can’t even keep my eyes open because I have about five of these tiny flies trying to ram into my eyeballs like there is no tomorrow! One of the strangest things is that when I held my phone up to take pictures of the landscape, I noticed that little black fuzzy things were zooming around the picture. That’s when I realized that these horrible nasty things thought my phone camera was an eyeball, and they were trying to get in on that action, too! So yeah. I could only stay up there for so long before I went away running, swatting the space in front of my eyes every couple seconds and hating these bugs with all my might.

Luckily, there were other things to explore in the park.

And on the way back down the hill, I found another shrine, this one carved into the mountainside like a cave.

Oh, and check out how furry the rock wall was with moss!

Some kind of crazy, piney moss. Very peculiar.

I was still making decent time, believe it or not, but I came to another fork in the road on my way to the giant Buddha, and I stood there for several minutes trying to decide if I should veer off to find the Sasuke Inari Shrine or if I should just go find this big Buddha already. In the end, I decided to go straight to the Buddha, but about five minutes later, I turned around and went back to find the shrine. I’m a mess.

But I was also super happy I turned around, because this shrine was very unique and the pathway up to it was lined in stunning red torii gates.

This special shrine was protected by hundreds and hundreds of tiny ceramic fox statues. It made for quite the sight, and I was all alone up here, save for some construction men working on part of the shrine’s pathways.

It was like a magical fairyland. So strange and vibrant. I couldn’t stop smiling.

And then I found this intriguing muddy formation whose handrail suggested it was meant to be climbed. I’m sure you can guess what happened next…

I’d somehow found myself on a hike, and when I reached the top, I was informed that the giant Buddha could be reached from here, so there was no turning back, now!

Yet another side path that I couldn’t resist took me to a magical terrace café carved into the side of the mountain, and I couldn’t resist sitting down to read and enjoy some mouthwatering ice cream topped with berries.

I seriously live for this stuff. Supposedly, the owner was a rich man who built his home up here, but because of the hiking trail, people would often stop in to ask if they could use his restroom, ask for directions, etc., so he finally just made a business out of it!

So, as wonderful as this café was and as magical as this day had been thus far, I did run into some trouble. The trouble here is that when I finally peeled myself away from the terrace café and made my way down the mountain in search of the giant Buddha, I passed a temple-looking thing and wanted to explore, but I told myself, “No, Lizzy. Enough of this. You need to find this silly Buddha.” So I marched on and on and on, ended up on another shopping street, bought a couple trinkets, and after about ten minutes of this, I thought, “This doesn’t feel right.” So I checked my map, and sure enough, I was going in the wrong direction.

And then I went in the wrong direction another couple of times, and long story short, that “temple-looking thing” I had passed earlier was in fact, the Buddha. But by the time I figured that out and made my way back there, it was closed. This was the best view I got:

Bummer, dude. But also kind of funny and so predictable that after a day of side trips, the one time I prevent myself from taking a side trip, it ends up being the main event. *Sigh.* You win some; you lose some.

I hung out near the Buddha for a while as I tried to puzzle through what to do next, and I eventually decided to make my way over to Enoshima, the small island nearby.

The sun was setting by the time I arrived, and it made the whole island seem draped in a layer of calm.

For a dinnertime snack, I had a croquette, for which the area is somewhat famous, and I was surprised and alarmed at the color inside.

Still not sure what I was eating, but it tasted good enough, so I tried not to think too much about it.

I found a playground and swung a little while I watched a man feed all of the stray cats in the park. Pretty cute.

After swinging, I climbed up another mountain to find the Enoshima Shrine.

And some more gorgeous views, this time of the sea.

The shrine was the start to several sets of staircases which lead to the top of the mountain. Here, a garden, more views, and a lighthouse named the Sea Candle, could be found.

I paid the small admission to the garden and wandered a bit in the twilight.

I was obsessed with this beautiful gazebo.

And there were so many little touches in the garden which made it a delight for romantic (solo) wanderings.

Thankfully, the Sea Candle observation deck was still open, so up I went!

This observation deck boasts one of the most beautiful nighttime views in Japan. The bridge to the mainland and all of the lights on the shore were mesmerizing, but it was also fun to see how the shoreline seemed to hug this little island in on itself, since Enoshima is tucked up in a bay of sorts.

On my way back down the mountain, I explored a few more spaces on the Enoshima Shrine grounds.

And then I had a dark, quiet walk through the city streets that are normally bustling in the daytime.

When I reached the bus bay, I was met with another choice. I could hop on a bus in four minutes, or I could… not.

So I didn’t! The beach was calling me, and I couldn’t bear to leave it unvisited. I wound down this cobbled path and stood beneath the bridge, letting the waves wash up around my ankles and reveling in the evening breeze.

I felt fully fulfilled after that, so I wandered back up to let my feet dry before walking across the bridge to the train station. When I was dropped off in Yokohama, I explored the bright lights of the downtown area a bit before heading back to the apartment.

I had planned to take a bath when I got back, but I could barely keep my eyes open long enough to brush my teeth, and then I was out. More adventures to come.

私はあなたに最高を祈ります/ best wishes,
-Lizzy-wa