the Buddha's soul escapes at night

Desperate to get out of Tokyo, we headed to Kamakura, home of the infamous Great Buddha. It probably took as long to get there as it did for us to figure out which platform we were supposed to be on in Shinjuku... While the wonderful cell phones do tell us how to get from one station to another, plus the times and costs of the trains, they do not tell us which platform they depart from.

Kamakura is a relatively small town, especially in comparison to Tokyo. It seemed that the bulk of the population consisted of tourists who couldn't find their way around. Since we, whether consciously or not, always seem to end up following the people in front of us, it was literally the blind leading the blind. Despite this, the Buddha was easy enough to find, and we ended up spending a considerable amount of time just sitting near it in silence. "Basking in the glow of the Buddha," if you will.

By the time the sun went down, it was freezing, and, after eating sweet potato ice cream, we decided to duck into a coffee shop/art gallery to warm up before heading towards the beach. The downstairs portion of the place was an art gallery with a huge grand piano taking up more than half of the space. There were three people sitting around it drinking wine. Up a very steep and rickety flight of stairs was the coffee shop section. There was hole in the middle of the room which opened down to the gallery and was surrounded by a small counter with chairs. One of the women in the gallery was playing something truly beautiful on the piano beneath us. When she finished, and after we stopped clapping, like a true artiste she went into a broken English rant about how it was an original song which she composed on the spot, and that's the only way she'll play music. For the first time in a long time, I felt peaceful and warm and glad to be here in Japan.

After freezing on the beach we decided to go to Denny's. After all, what's a trip to Japan without going to Denny's? Being somewhat naive, I was really excited about having some pancakes. The interior seemed Denny's enough--ugly booths and fairly hideous wallpaper... But when we opened the menu, there was no Moon Over My Hammy to be had, nor any pancakes. There were various soba dishes, and lots of meat items, green tea ice cream and Bubbalicious for sale at the register, which I bought without even looking at the price... I blew bubbles all the way home--much to the chagrin of the natives.