Kamakura

On a daytrip to Kamakura today, about a 90-minute train ride from Tokyo. Kamakura was the 4th largest city in the world in 1250 AD, but today it’s a quaint tourist destination, mostly known for its temples and beaches.

Before we got on our train, we stopped by Coffee PUNKTO, an adorable cafe in the lobby of a puppet theater.

It also had a really cute gift shop and I was really tempted to get a shirt with some funny cats. But I resisted.

As I mentioned in the first entry on this blog, the full-size dithered images I show here are made with an “emulator” that recreates the built-in dithering of the eInk display. I’ve been trying to calibrate the colors so that they look as close to how the display looks in real life, but it’s interesting how even the smallest differences can affect the dither patterns. For example, look at the pillow on the screen in the photo above – it’s a solid green, almost the same as the seat. The emulated photo at the very top, however, shows it as the more “true to life” cyan color. I’m not sure which one I prefer just yet, but it’s fun to tweak the code and notice these differences. I don’t mind the fact that there’s two slightly different variants of the same image.

Once we got off the train in Kamakura it was already lunchtime and we were hungry, so we stopped at a restaurant that specialized in donburi.

Once again I tried to sneak in some shots of the chefs.

After lunch we headed to Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, a large temple complex at the end of the main street.

I saw some people feeding a flock of pigeons. Some of the pigeons had even climbed on top of them.

The shrines were beautiful, but looking back at my photos it seems I was most impressed by this vending machine + visitor center combo.

And the peaceful (real!) ducks in front of it.

After the temple we got on a bus that took us to the main sight I wanted to see in Kamakura, the Great Buddha – an 11.4 meter bronze statue.

We even went inside it! The statue is hollow.

We ended the day by eating some enormous oysters by the beach, but at that point I was so hot and sweaty that I didn’t want to touch the camera, so no photos to prove it…

This is my last postcard from Japan. We spent a couple more days exploring Tokyo, but I left the camera home to rest. The Buddha photo was a nice one to keep on display on the shelf for a bit.