solo travel
not a ton to talk about today. i traveled by train from hiroshima to kamakura, a beach town south of tokyo.
i took one last photo while i was waiting for my train at hiroshima station.
killing time
i had a bit of a lemons into lemonade moment at hiroshima station. i have a massive suitcase, which means that on bullet trains i have to buy seats in the back row of the car i am in, where there is an “oversized luggage area” exclusive to people sitting in that row. i checked on the trains departing for tokyo when i got to the station, and the next train that had availability in the “oversized luggage area” row was not departing for 90 minutes.
but it turned out to be alright, because hiroshima station is huge. it contains a whole 5 floor shopping mall. and one of the things i wanted to get while i was here was some souvenir merch from the local baseball team, the hiroshima toyo carp. i scoured this mall and did not find anything. after i fully gave up, i headed into 7-eleven to get a drink, and there was a whole corner devoted to hiroshima carp merch. so i got a bunch of stuff. a couple hats, a jersey for my mom, a lanyard for my keys, and a t shirt. the shirts were all sealed in plastic bags, so i just had to trust the english “large” next to the t shirt i bought. turns out its a child’s t shirt. lmao.
travel
it took around 4 hours to get to tokyo, and then another 45 minutes on local trains to get to where i was actually staying. kamakura is an interesting place. it’s not popular enough to get a bullet train stop, but it is a massive tourist destination all the same. though it seems the overwhelming majority of the tourist activity is via day trip from tokyo or yokohama. people don’t seem to actually stay here overnight.
i think this is the smallest japanese city i’ve ever spent a night in. i also think it has the highest percentage of foreign tourists i have seen anywhere i’ve been. i am not exaggerating when i say that it feels like over 75% of the human beings i have seen in kamakura have been non japanese. its really interesting.
room tour
the airbnb i got is really cool. its a tiny japanese tatami apartment above a bookstore run by an old spanish guy named carlos.
its a neat little room, but it has the same problem i have with all tatami mat accomodations in japan. nowhere to sit comfortably. there are chairs, but theyre far from comfy. and while i love japanese futons, in a situation like this i would really prefer a bed to sit on.
the only real downside to this place is that the internet is abysmal. like, 1990s “15 seconds to load one image” level bad. and for some reason, my phone switched over to a different carrier in this city that was equally awful. so i basically took a 2 day beach vacation with zero internet. honestly, i kinda liked it. it was annoying to be unable to stay caught up on the website, but it did force me to spend more time out and less time looking at a screen. nice.
kamakura feels a little bit like japanese encinitas, but if it wasn’t a rich people neighborhood. it certainly has some rich people houses, but the area in general does not feel ultra fancy or upper class. the main “attractions” here are the beach and the kotoku-in buddhist temple, where there is a 43 foot tall buddha statue made of bronze that weighs over 260,000 pounds.
i took very few photos today, as it was largely spent sleeping on the train. but i did go for a night walk after dropping my bags at the airbnb.
that orange vending machine is kind of remarkable to me. fruit is so hard to come by in japan, and usually costs a premium. so a machine with fresh oranges on the roadside is an absolute wonder. it rolls an orange down into the machine, drops a paper cup, and squeezes the orange into fresh orange juice for you, for only 500 yen.
