Making the Most of Every Minute

Well, I'm back in the states and, once again, I find myself trying to adjust to the time change. It was not easy to leave Japan knowing there were still so many things that I wanted to see and do, but I was also excited to come home and share my experiences with all of you in person! Not to mention, it was pretty thrilling to come home to a championship winning baseball team! GO PHILLIES! There is also a pretty big election taking place on Tuesday and you know I couldn't be out of the country for that! Since there are still a few more issues we need to cover before the voting begins on Tuesday, we will cover those on Monday in class and talk about my trip on Wednesday. Meanwhile, I will continue to update my blog and fill you in on my last week in Japan.

My trip did not end when I left Takeo. I still had 3 1/2 days left in Tokyo before it was time to head back to the United States and I was determined to see and do as much as possible in that time. In fact, as soon as we got off the bus at the hotel in Tokyo, I was back on a train with a few friends from my group, headed to Kamakura. Kamakura is one hour away from Tokyo by train and it was the capitol of Japan during the Heian period (1192-1333). We knew we would never get to see all of the sites in Kamakura in just a couple hours, but we figured that seeing some of Kamakura was better than not seeing any of Kamakura.

Our first stop in this historic city was the Hasedera temple. The Hasedera temple was started by the Jodo sect of Buddhism and is home to the largest wooden statue of the goddess Kan'non, the goddess of Mercy, in Japan. On the way to the Main Hall, where the Kan'non statue is housed is an area called the Jizo-do. In Buddhism, Jizo is the guardian of lost children (I've show pictures of similar shrines before, in which the statues at these shrines are wearing red "bibs"). In the Jizo-do at Hasedera, there are at least 1,000 statues of Jizo that have been dedicated by parents who lost their children. The sight of all of these statues in one place is very moving. In the same temple complex, there were winding paths that took us through lush gardens. There were Shinto shrines in every nook and cranny, with amazing views of the Pacific coastline. People from all over the world have been to Kamakura to visit these shrines and offer their prayers for peace.

There was so much to see at Hasedera that there was only enough time to visit one more temple in Kamakura. We walked (actually, we almost ran) down the street to the Daibutsu, the Great Buddha of Kamakura. The Daibutsu is dates back to 1252 and it is the second largest Buddha in Japan. Just like the Great Camphor tree in Takeo, you can only really get a true sense of the enormity of the Great Buddha when you see a picture of people standing next to it. It only stands to reason that such a big Buddha would have a great, big pair of sandals, too!

We left the Daibutsu as the sky began to get dark and went for a quick hike through the hills of Kamakura on our way back to the train station. Right before we turned back onto the main road, we came across the entrance to another shrine. Even though the shrine was closed up for the night, the gates were still open. Since we didn't know if we would ever have a chance to come back, we decided to have a look around. Somewhere in the background we could hear a waterfall, but from where we were standing, we couldn't see where it was coming from. Tucked back in the far corner, we could see a dim light. When we got closer, we could see that it was coming from the entrance to a small cave that contained a shrine. Based on what we found at the shrine, we deduced that this was the Zeniarai shrine, where worshippers come to wash their money. It is believed that money washed in this shrine will double.

There are so many more places I wanted to visit in Kamakura, but by this point all of the shrines and temples were closed, it was getting late, and I had seminars first thing the next morning. On the train back to Tokyo, I began to realize that my time in Japan was coming to an end and I was going to have to make the most of every minute I had left to even see a fraction of the things I had yet to see in this amazing country! Over the next few weeks, I will continue to update my blog and share not only what I did over the course of my last two days in Japan, but also my reflections on Japanese schools and society and how they are similar to and differnent from American schools and society.