My friend (Ashley) and I, decided to travel outside of Tokyo to see how it is different outside of the big city where it isn't as crowded - there are 35 million people in Tokyo alone!
Kamakura is just south of Tokyo (an hour's train ride away for 800¥) and is known for it's many temples and shrines.
We stayed in a traditional style hostel and had to sleep on the floor on futons. The walls were paper thin so you could hear everything from the communal room next door!
There was a huge statue of a Buddha down the road from our hostel:
I also went for a hike around an old Japanese temple:
After Kamakura, we visited Hakone, which is up in the mountains and known for its hot springs and onsen (baths with natural spring water).
We hiked up to Mount Komagatake where we had a fantastic view of Mount Fuji and Lake Ashii.
We are now back in Tokyo and await our flight to Auckland, New Zealand on Thursday! We are just bracing ourselves for the second typhoon this Monday - the last one brought an onslaught of torrential rain which ruined our early morning trip to a tuna auction in a fish market (we stayed up all night to visit at 3am!).
