Hakone (箱根町) Kanagawa Prefecture

12th May 2009, we made our way by train to Hakone in Kanagawa Prefecture, about 100 kilometers south-west from Tokyo. Hakone is part of the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, which means you can view Mount Fuji from here. It is also famous for it's hot spring. We will be spending 2 days 1 night at Hakone, staying in a traditional ryokan with it's own onsen.


But first, how to get there. You can purchase a Hakone Freepass from Odakyu Sightseeing Service Center at Shinjuku Station. The return ticket cost Y$5000 each (S$75) for a 2-days pass. 3-days pass are also available. From Shinjuku, it's 1 hour to Odawara, where you will need to change to the Odakyu Line to Hakone-Yumoto (15 minutes). From Hakone-Yumoto you take a train to Gora (40 minutes) uphill, and from Gora you're free to explore as you wish. Note that the freepass give you unlimited access to all the train rides in the Hakone area. This includes ropeway, cable cars, buses, and even cruise ships.


Our destination for that day was Owakudani (大涌谷), which is also known as Great Boiling Valley. Will write more about it tomorrow. Stay tune.

Ref:
Mount Fuji 富士山,
Ryokan 旅館
Onsen 温泉

Amanawa Shimei Jinja Shrine (甘縄神明宮) Kamakura

Last but not least, we visited the oldest shrine in Kamakura, the Amanawa Shimei Jinja Shrine (甘縄神明宮) . It's not really a tourist attraction there. In fact there was no one there when we visit it. If it was not for our guide, we would never have known this shrine's existence, which I thought would have been a great lost. In fact, if you were to google "amanawa shinmei", you would only get one page of result!

The Shinto shrine was build in 710. Can you imagine what life was like in 710? To stand in the presence of something so ancient (almost 1200 years old!), and surrounded by the forest, is really quite an amazing and spiritual feeling.

And with that last shrine, ends our exploration of Kamakura, as we headed back to Tokyo for our next adventure.

Hasedera Temple (長谷寺) Kamakura

Hasedera Temple (長谷寺) is my favorite temple in Kamakura. It is mainly for worship place for the 11-headed Kannon (Goddess of Mercy). But what I like best about it is a special place for lost children.

As you enter the temple and make your way up towards the main shrine, there is a little garden filled with miniature statues of monks and Jizo, the guardian of children. Each miniature statue to your right represents an unborn child from abortion, or stillborn. The parent will come here and place a statue here as a memorial to the child. It is a sad, yet peaceful sight to see the tribute to unborn children.


Here too is where I took one of my favorite shots of my trip in Japan. Most of the photos you've seen so far are not taken by me. But this one is, and I absolutely love this photo and have uploaded it here in full resolution.

Ref:
Goddess of Mercy
Jizo

Daibutsu (大仏) Kamakura

At Hase, we visited the Kōtoku-in Temple(高徳院) where the Daibutsu is. The temple is about 500m walk from the Hase Station of the Enoden Line. By paying just Y$20 (S$0.30), you can even go inside the Daibutsu and touch it from the inside. It's believe that luck will come to you if you touch it, so Y$20 is a small price to pay for luck! Plus you get to touch a National Treasure!

The Daibutsu used to have a house over it's head, but this was washed away by a tsunami in 1498. The sea is just 1km away from it, so you can imagine what it was like! The statue was also originally covered in gold leaves. Around the garden of Daibutsu, you can still see the stone pillar foundation of where the temple once stood. The stones now serves as seats for visitors there.


Last but not least, here's a photo showing the Daibutsu of Kamakura, vs the Tian Tan Buddha (天壇大佛) in Hong Kong. The Daibutsu has three distinct features, the hand in meditation, the eyes close with a calm smile, and an arch shoulder showing at ease. It is an inviting feature to its worshiper that radiates calm and peace. The Tian Tan Buddha(天壇大佛) in Hong Kong has one hand up, and one hand on it's leg. I'm told that the the hand that signals 'stop' means "Don't be afraid", and the open palm on the leg means "I am here, and I will accompany you". And that this is meant to tell us that we should not be afraid of death or the journey before us. But the definition in wikipedia states that "His right hand is raised, representing the removal of affliction. His left hand rests on his lap in a gesture of giving dhana." I'll leave the meaning up to your interpretation.

Ref:
Tian Tan Buddha (天壇大佛)Hong Kong

Temples in Kamakura

Kamakura is basically big on Buddhism. We visited lots of temple while we were there. Each temple are around 500m away from each other, so we did a fair lot of walking, not to mention a lot of uphill climbs as some of the tombs we visited were in caves along the slope of the hill. It was almost a deja-vu moment of hiking in Taroko Gorge Taiwan. But thankfully, it was not a 10km hike in 4 hours!


The Zen Buddhism temples we visited includes Kencho-Ji Temple (建長寺), Jochi-Ji Temple (金宝山浄智寺), Tokei-Ji Temple (松岡山東慶寺), and Engaku-Ji Temple (瑞鹿山円覚興聖禅寺). Most of the temples have it's own bell, some which are so old that they are considered Japan's National Treasures.


Kosoku-ji Temple (光則寺) is one temple you may want to visit in March or April when the flowers are in full bloom. It is more like a flower garden then a temple, and even though when we visit, most of the flowers were no longer in season, it was still nice to walk around the garden. Some of the trees there are more then 100 years old and still blooms every year!

After exploring the temples, we took a train back to Kamakura for lunch before heading to Hase, west of Kamakura via the Enoden Train.

Ref:
National Treasures of Japan