[Date & Time] Saturday, March 12,at 10:00～15:00[Spots] Kamakura Station, KamakuraFarmers Market, Sugimotodera Temple, Jomyoji Temple, and Hokokuji Temple
[Visitor] 1 British Woman
[Attendant] 1 KSGG member
[Language] English
The visitor was a very energetic British woman who worked for a Japanese-affiliated company and had visited Japan around ten times. We first visited the Kamakura Farmers Market, where we discovered a black vegetable called Black Cabbage which both of us had not heard of. In the bus to Sugimotodera Temple, I was so excited in explaining to her about the history of Kamakura and Hinamatsuri (Doll’s Festival) that we had gone too far to Jomyoji Temple, which was one stop further than the one we were supposed to get off at. I should not have made such a careless mistake as being a tour guide. I apologized to her for my carelessness and went back to Sugimoto Kannon, where she was more interested in the temple bell rather than the eleven-faced Kannon. As the signboard indicated that it had been made in 1965, I explained about the obligatory supply of metals to the government during World War II. She responded that it had been the same everywhere.
At Jomyoji Temple, we enjoyed matcha（powdered green tea）and explained about the spirits of tea ceremony such as Wakei Seijaku (four important elements of tea ceremony: harmony, respect, purity and tranquility) and Ichigo Ichie (uniquely precious encounter). She was very pleased to see that the family crest of the Ashikaga clan was also used as a design for higashi (traditional dry confectionery) to go with green tea. At Hokokuji Temple, she was curious about the chain of rings suspended from the corner of the roof and raised a question what it was for. Having received the answer from a receptionist that it was used for a kind of drainpipe to get rainwater easily down to the ground, she was very impressed with it. After lunch at a restaurant named Furin located on the second floor of the station building, she bought some origami papers for her daughter at Komachi-Dori Street, saying that her daughter did not have any books of origami but could make origami from learning on You Tube. At the end of this tour, I handed a washi-ningyo (a paper doll made of Japanese traditional paper) to her, which she was really pleased with.