[Date & Time] Monday, August 3, 12:00～15:00
[Spots] Kotokuin Temple (The Great Buddha), Hasedera Temple, and Tsurugaoka
Hachimangu Shrine
[Visitors] 1Englishman and his 17-year-old son
[Attendant] 1 KSGG member
[Language] English
The visitors, who had
visited Nara, Kyoto, Hiroshima and Nagoya, intended to visit Kamakura and Tokyo
as the last places of their Japan tour.
I thought we’d better walk for less time in the severe heat of the day and
we took a bus at Kamakura Station to Kotokuin Temple. They had seen the Great Buddha in Todaiji
Temple in Nara. They said the Great
Buddha in the open air had a different atmosphere from that in the hall and
seemed bigger. They enjoyed going inside
of the Buddha. Then we walked to Hasedera
Temple. As they had also visited
Hasedera Temple in Nara, I found it easier to tell the story of the twin Hase
Kannon. Compared with the temples and
shrines in Kyoto or Nara, those in Kamakura are smaller and I was afraid the
visitors felt a little unsatisfied with them.
However, the Kamakura tour seemed less tough and a good chance to review
about the temples and shrines at the last time of traveling. They asked me difficult questions such as “Why
does Japan have lots of capitals?”, “Shinto is easy to understand but Buddhism
is complex and difficult to understand.” and so on. Our topics were so wide-ranged from
Shakespeare to Murasaki Shikibu, female writer of Genji Monogatari. I thought
it was necessary to increase my knowledge about various things as well as
Kamakura.