kamakura + yokohama

so... i have so much to say about my day today.

first we started off at our train station where we caught the rush hour people traffic into tokyo on an express train. good idea cause it was fast, very bad idea cause it was so stuffed. i have literally never been smooshed like i was this morning. see, all the japanese people file in and face the same direction, so you are smooshed but at least you aren't face to face with a stranger, you just end up all on top of someone else's back. well... we didn't quite realize that and i ended up going in kinda sideways. lets just say that at one point, i counted myself touching 6 other bodies at once. after one rearrangement (cause at each stop, you get a little different spacing) i

 was face to face (well, more like my chin over this older guys face) and our bellies were touching and i could feel him breathing. see, i wasn't joking about being smashed in

 there. literally like zero room left and then shove 9 more people in each doorway, that's what it's like!

we were off to kamakura to see some of the many temples. the highlight for me was the great buddha! he is so big, it was awesome!!! i geeked out and of course snapped tons of photos. we also got to the beach about midday. this is where my fear of birds has escalated to a new all time high. first, there aren't any harmless seagulls at this beach, only full on humongous black crows and hawks. my friends warned me that the hawks were coming down and going for food but i thought it wouldn't be that serious. well... the hawks were serious and one of them swiped my half of sandwich right from my hand. i screamed like 4 seconds after it happened cause i was so shocked and couldn't quite realize what happened. so yes, i had been leery of birds before but now i think i have a full blown fear. i was jumpy the rest of the day, even when pigeons were flying about.

the day ended with a quick stop over in yokohama at the chinatown. we just walked around for a bit and checked out the bay area and called it a day and headed back to chiba. we started at 6:30 am and finally made it back about 7:30 pm so it was a long but fun adventurous day in japan! tomorrow is a recovery, sleep day though ;)

peep pix HERE