Brian and Johnny got up early to do a hike. Grace slept a wee bit, but got up to type the blog info while watching the morning come awake through the balcony. Still over-cast, but lovely just the same.
Brian made it to the top...damned near dead...but he made it. It was through lush and wet vegetation--thus the drenched, drowned rat look (though some of it was good hard-working sweat).
Breakfast was served in the same fashion as dinner…multitudinous variety.
Took off to Kamakura to see the Daibutsu (Great Buddha). There were several temples around the area. One was a secluded trail of stone steps, very shaded and lovely with lush vegetation. The Temples were serene and beautiful.
At one point during our walk, we came upon a small shop where a man was making tatami mats. Just outside was a small boy playing with a boy and an older man watching over him. We surmise that this was 3 generations of family--and likely a family business. Brian asked Johnny to ask if he could take a picture. As we walked away and had gone a good way down the road, we heard the older man run up calling to us. He gave us some of the left over materials--small 10-inch squares, which were finished with lovely materially and turned into very lovely trivets!
We drove further into town and had lunch at a small shop called “Buoy”. There were whisky bottles on the wall shaped like sailing ships of old. Johnny had a pork sandwich; Grace had ground steak with poached egg on top; Brian had shrimp curry over rice. All was excellent.
We then walked to where the Daibutsu was.
Grace had been there before on her last trip in 1981—still as spectacular as ever. Brian believes he was there, too—though he was much younger. It was nice to share the experience together.
This was the first time we’d gone *inside* the Daibutsu. A bit claustrophobic and hot.
At one point, Grace looked over and saw Johnny—who is a tall guy, being surrounded by nearly a dozen elementary aged girls (there was a school field trip going on). He looked like a movie star with hordes of adoring fans. Apparently, one of the assignments was that each kid had to go up to a “foreigner” and talk to them. Johnny was sitting off to the side of the main area and he heardthem say, “Now we have to talk to a foreigner”—in Japanese. Johnny is quite fluent in Japanese so he knew what was coming.
After Kamakura, we drove to Kanagawa-ken—to Chigasaki to where Grace’s Mom’s sister, Kyoko, lives. Kyoko is #2 of 7 daughters (Grace’s Mom is #3). Junko, Kyoko-san’s daughter and Grace’s younger cousin, was also there. Johnny acted as interpreter, as neither Kyoko-san nor Jun-chan could speak English. Jun-chan remembered Brian from 1985 when she and her husband came to California for their honeymoon and, at that time, Brian took off work and acted as chauffeur and drove them and Grace’s Mom around various points of interest in California. [As a point of interest, Kyoko-san would have been a namesake for Grace as her father had wanted to give her a Japanese middle name when she was born—something that her mother nixed—only because she was afraid of what kind of prejudice the family might incur once they moved to America.] Kyoko-san is 79—though one would swear she was in her early 50’s (sheesh—Grace’s age), she was sooo vibrant—a real fireball. “Sugoku genki” is what Johnny kept saying—which means very healthy and young-looking. The visit was very short, unfortunately, as we had to leave around 5:30am the next morning and had to get back and turn in early.
Yoshiko-san made us all yet another wonderful dinner. During dinner, we experienced a very small earthquake no more than 5 seconds. Don’t know if this is just “another normal” earthquake that Japan gets so frequently—or, whether it was tied to what has been going on lately with other big quakes in the South Pacific that has caused the tsunami that has wreaked havoc in Samoa and Indonesia.
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