Kamakura

Today I went to Kamakura, which is a seaside town south of Yokohama. It was briefly the capital of Japan during the 13th century. (I just looked up Kamakura on wikipedia to check the date, and learned something really interesting: People think it was the fourth largest city in the world back in the 12th century. It's built in an ideal location for an old city-surrounded by mountains on three sides and the ocean on the fourth.)

Kamakura is famous for its giant bronze Buddha, or daibutsu, which was built around 1252 and is almost 14 meters high. On our way into see the daibutsu, we were stopped by three young men and a woman who asked if they could talk to us for a moment. I thought they were probably trying to sell something, but we stopped anyway. They explained they were students at a nearby universities who volunteered to give tours in order to improve their English. They were members of a cross-cultural club, and they took turns doing this each weekend. This was a little bit of an only-in-Japan moment for me. A sign one is in an economically secure country: volunteer tour guides don't try to charge you.

Before we went to see the Buddha, there was a well of water with several tin dippers placed across it. Our guides instructed us to first wash our left hand, then our right, then our mouth. We then saw the Buddha. One of my favorite moments was when one of our guides described his third eye as a laser. It's completely hollow, so we got to go inside the belly of the Buddha. Looking up, I could see the indentation of each knot of his hair inside the casting of his head. To one side of the Buddha were giant straw sandals that must have been about six feet long. There were several bronze statues of the lotus flower on either side, each with blooms ranging from fully closed to part way open to in full flower. Our guides explained that this symbolized the past, present, and future.

(I think there was a time I knew a lot more about Buddhism. I think when I was 15, I knew more about existentialism, the Indian Subcontinent, the Russian and French revolutions and post colonial literature than I know now. When I was three, I knew a lot of things about dinosaurs I have long since forgetten. Information about marine mammals, the Salem Witch trials, and human evolution has also been left along the wayside somewhere in favor of backbending labor supply curves and learning to apply eyeliner, things I expect to forget in the next ten years. It's a little sad to think about losing knowledge. I guess it's relearnable.)

Our guides were great. They were freshman and sophomores who were studying economics and cross cultural relations. Throughout the tour, they strived to find their own themes for transcedent conversations. Did I like music? What "man type" did I like? What kinds of Japanese food had I tried?

After the daibutsu, we went to Hase temple, which is famous for its giant wooden statue of Kannon, the goddess of mercy. There was also a golden buddha statue with offerings like sake and oranges around its base. People tossed coins into the offering box in front of the statues and made wishes. There was a beautiful writing room with rows of low-lying tables and cushions and large windows. Each table was stocked with elegant writing paper and ink, and people sat on the cushions and wrote wishes, which they later tied onto wooden frames. I was worried I'd make a mess with the ink, so I stuck to the more familar coin wishing approach.

What made the Hase temple unnerving and eery were the small stone statues in rows and rows everywhere. As I understand, women purchase the statues to "give peace to unborn children." Amid the rows of identical statues was occasionally a flash of color-- one statue was wearing a red knit cap. Another wore a pink sweater. Another had crackers left at its base. There were small childrens' toys everywhere. It was a little bit chilling, but I guess if it allows women to make peace with themselves while still acknowledging their abortion or miscarriage, it's certainly a powerful idea. It reminded me a little of the tomb of the unknown solidier somehow. Graveyards commemorate people who have been known, whereas this temple commemorated the idea of a person.

But, then, I'm not sure if this is the goal of the temple grounds at all. Perhaps memorialize and commemorate are entirely inappropriate words to use. Perhaps by putting a statue there, one is protecting oneself against a ghost. The truth is lost in the vagueries of my pamplet for english-speaking tourists.

At the base of the temple was a cave filled with more stone statues, and other, large sculptures. The cave itself was carved out of the rock and was very old. We had to crouch-walk thought most of it. After emerging from the cave, we climbed up the hillside to an overlook where we could see the ocean and the town of Kamakura below us. Through the climb, there were lots of signs urging people to be quiet because it was a meditative place. Even though the site was packed, almost everyone was silent. (I was also impressed by the number of people making the trip in heels; the woman in front of me didn't falter in boots with four inch silettos. A meditation on balance, I guess. )

The top really highlighted what a protected bay it was. We could see the mountains on three sides of us, then straight across the bay and out to sea. Back when Kamakura was the capital and there was an ongoing threat of Mongol invasion, I could imagine a lookout scanning the horizon line for ships. It reminded me a little of Rumeli Kavagi, an old fortress at the north of the strait of Bosphorus in Turkey-- or the view from the acropolis in Greece.

Kamakura is a beach town as well as home to major Buddhist sites, and we wound up on the beach. It's been an unseasonably warm December, and I have a hard time seeing ocean without going in, so I rolled up my jeans and did some wading. A lot of people were braver then me-- there were tons of surfers and windsurfers bracing themselves against the cold in wetsuits. I was jealous.

We ended up at the "Seedless California Beach Bar" (I guess the seedy one is down the round) where I discovered that my thumb is not big enough to fill to cover the top of a Corona bottle when trying to mix in the lime. Oops. I probably could have looked at my hand and figured this out, but at least my already salty jeans were the only victim of my experiential learning style.