few more Kamakura pics

Anita spearheaded our trip to Kamakura and as luck would have it, no rain! There she is with the entrance gate to Engaku-ji, a Zen temple, behind her.

A couple of the gate's wood carvings:

Engaku-ji is keeper of a very Big Bell, cast in 1301

A great day for a hike...

Statue of Minamoto no Yoritomo, warrior and Kamakura Shogun, 1192-1199

After hiking for about, oh, two hours or so, we finally made it to the Daibutsu
(a.k.a. Great Buddha, Amita-Buddha, god of salvation...)

The Great Buddha and Me. (A love story.)

These next shots were taken at Hasa-dera, a temple known for its Jizo statues. There are thousands of them clustered around, on ledges, up stairwells, etc. Jizo is the Japanese version of a bodhisattva who is believed to be a guardian of children (and usually depicted as a Buddist monk). Each statue represents a baby who has died, so it's a pretty sobering sight.

The statues do look kind of happy though, don't they?
Here's a particularly jolly one...
Someone knitted a little hoodie for this one in the front row over here:

We stopped for a drink before boarding the train back to Tokyo...