A few days as tourists between sessions.

With a week free between spring sessions, once grades were posted by midweek, we spent a few days seeing some sights around the Kanto Plain.

Kamakura

Our first venture was to hop in the car on Wednesday and drive to the coastal town of Kamakura where a giant Buddha is the biggest draw.  After driving several hours, we found a parking place and located an interesting cafe with an Hawaiian/Beach theme.  Ellen chose the Okinawaan Taco Rice and I picked White Tail Tempura Don.  We were excited by the beautiful presentation of the food and equally enjoyed the fine taste.

After noticing that the tempura in my dish was actually all shredded vegetables, I began looking for the fish that I assumed was part of the dish (White Tail).  After closer inspection, I noticed the little pairs of eyes which seemed to be staring up at me.

Enough on food!  As we walked up the street to the main attraction of the city, Ellen paused to take a snapshot of these unique flip-flops.

The main attraction of Kamakura is the giant Buddha including his flip-flops on display!

Kawagoe

Having enjoyed that brief adventure, on Thursday we jumped back into the pink Fit and drove a few dozen kilometers north of the air base we call home and went to a city called Kawagoe.  This city has a number of sites with historical and religious significance.  The first stopping point for us was the Honmaru Goten which was built in the mid-1800's as part of the Kawagoe Castle, originally built in the Edo period as an important trade and defensive point north of the city which later became known as Tokyo.

We enjoyed walking the historic main street of Kawagoe lined with Kurazukuri which are clay-walled, warehouse-style buildings that were reminiscent of an old town of the Edo period including an old bell-tower that is still used today to sound off the time at certain hours.

One of the attractions in the city is to rent kimonos and view the historic sites in "style".  I found this blend of old and new interesting.

Hints of spring were found tucked among the buildings.

We visited the Kawagoe Festival museum and learned about the annual festival of ornately carved and decorated two-story "floats" representing over two-dozen towns in the area.  

A link for more about the festival and the floats.

Kawagoe is also known for its sweet potatoes.  We saw many small shops offering variations of this vegetable.  Many of the small restaurants have one set meal rather than a menu of selections.  Our choice of a restaurant, on the second floor above street vendors selling sweet potato treats, provided a delightful dish of steamed vegetables over rice along with a delicious clear broth soup, pickled vegetables and sweet beans.

Tokyo Temple

Having seen a number of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, we thought it would be nice to visit the Tokyo temple and do a session there.  Of course, parking is a challenge so for this adventure on Friday, we climbed aboard the train at the Fussa Station to head into Tokyo.  It took about an hour land a half and two trains and one subway to arrive at the Hiroo Station where we grabbed a sandwich from our favorite corner bakery and ate while we hurried up the street to catch a 2 pm session.  We both used earphones for the English translation, but halfway through the session, I decided to switch to channel 4 on the device and listen to the rest in Portuguese--to help keep me focused.

Ajinomoto Stadium and J1 Professional Soccer

Since the MLS (Major League Soccer) season kicked off in the U.S. this week, it was only appropriate that we celebrated the beginning of summer soccer season with a week 2 match between two of the regions big teams in the top-level of the Japan Soccer League.  Once again, we chose to use the trains/subway to get to the game since every notice of the game we could find said that there was NO parking at the stadium during major events.  We were impressed by how efficiently the subway could deliver 40,000 fans to a game and not have any congested traffic surrounding the stadium.  The efficiency of the event staff was equally appreciated, even though we did have a minor delay in displaying our electronic tickets on my iphone6 using the Tixee app. The real problem was that I was using the English version of the app so the tickets looked a little different for the gate staff--but we quickly proved that our tickets had been officially and electronically stamped and were admitted into the stadium.  The match was interesting as was the "international" feel at the beginning with the FC Tokyo fans singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" as if we were in Hillsborough.

Our seats in the upper tier.

Japanese BBQ at the beach!

We decided that spring is in the air (even though it was rainy and cool all week).  Therefore, seeing that the sun was shining on Saturday we decided to drive towards the coast and see if any plum blossoms were out.  We set our googlemaps navigation to Uminokoen Park in Yokohama. After arriving and parking our car we realized that it was mid-afternoon and we hadn't had any lunch yet.  We peeked into a small temporary structure that had the smell of charcoal smoke and saw what appeared to be a fresh market specializing in clams and shellfish.

On closer inspection it was obvious that all of the food was raw so we thought it was simply a fresh fish market.  However, when we went around the edge of the temporary structure, we realized that the structure extended for a a great length with more temporary structures and tents and that inside all of these were small tables surrounding makeshift charcoal grills.

We quickly figured out that people purchased the raw food and then were led to a grill and table where they could cook their food and eat it.  So we went back and got in the line to try it out.  We purchased a variety of things we could recognize, paid for the food, and waited to be taken to a grill and table.  The seats were made out of plastic crates and the grills were simple contraptions that were supplied with fresh, hot charcoal bricks when we were seated.  A nice young man gave us explicit instructions in perfect English and seeing that we didn't have any clams or oysters or other forms of shelled creatures, realized we didn't need any specific cooking instructions and wished us well and left.  We watched our neighbors cooking a variety of delicacies.

After feeling confident that we could do this, we donned the white gloves and placed our selections on the grill.  We had purchased some shrimp with heads attached, small sausages, bacon, and a small aluminum pan with salmon, mushrooms and butter sauce.  We also bought cooked brown rice wrapped in foil to go with the grilled items.

After a few minutes things were sizzling and smoking and we were getting ready to eat.  The shrimp was tasty but rather messy to shell.  The sausages and bacon were nice and hot.  The salmon and mushrooms were the last to be eaten since they cooked more slowly in the small aluminum pan covered with foil.  But in reality, the food was cooked and consumed in an amazingly short period of time.

After lunch we walked the wide stone pathway between the large beach and the grassy areas where many people were playing beach volleyball, soccer, kickball, jogging, strolling with their dogs, and generally enjoying the beautiful Saturday afternoon.

After we finished our park stroll, we returned to the car and decided to drop in on Doug's brother, Gary, since we were in Yokohama.  He obligingly gave up his afternoon shopping trip to host us.  We had a nice visit with him after which he took us to a wonderful Indian restaurant and gave us an evening tour of cosmopolitan Yokohama city.