Buddha town and an all nighter to finish my Asian adventure

---

On Tuesday I took a day trip to Kamakura, a town with tons of Buddhist, Zen and Shinto temples. One of the grounds included the Daibutsu Buddha, which is the second biggest Buddha statue in Japan weighing in at a whopping 93 tons. It was made out of bronze in 1252. In 1498 it was swept away by a tsunami but survived. Big Buddha now stands out in the open. Another temple that sticks out in my mind is the "divorce temple." During the Kamakura period (1192-1333), this temple was a refuge and safe place for battered women. After living there for three years, the women could get a divorce from their husbands.

Tuesday night I was passed along to a friend of a friend of a friend, a Japanese guy named Tomo, and stayed there until I left on Thursday. Tomo happened to have a friend from England visiting at the same time I was there. So I spent a day with an English guy fluent in Japanese. We started tourism around Tokyo at 9am and kept going until around 6pm. Even for a foreigner who lived in Tokyo for a year, mastering the subway system was a challenge. I don't know how many times we got on and off that subway to fix our mistakes! Dinner time brought a 2 hour all you can eat, all you can drink deal with a group of Japanese people. The night continued with bars, beers in parks and clubbing until 5am. Next on the list was the Tokyo Fish Market, which handles about 2,000 metric tons of fish a day, the most famous item being giant frozen tuna. Breakfast was fresh sushi-- the Japanese version being a small bundle of sticky rice with a small slab of raw fish on top, a dip in soy sauce to add some extra flavor. Delicious!! Got back to Tomo's apartment about 8am and headed straight to the airport to hitch a ride home.

This trip to Asia has been unlike any other. I have never felt so safe traveling in my entire life! The atmosphere in all of these countries includes thinking of others before themselves, so people never looked at me funny or treated me rudely just because I was a foreigner. I never had to worry about people stealing from me or anything. If I was alone and looked lost, people would come up to me and offer me help. Quite a nice change of pace from other places I have visited.

At all my destinations I met a great handful of people who treated me like an old friend on the first day we met. This would be the magic of meeting people while traveling... there's a special bond you find with people who enjoy world travel like you do, or who enjoy when people world travel to their home. I always invite my new pals to Minnesota, hoping one day it will make the cut on their future world travel list. Unfortunately, Minnesota doesn't tend to be the top US tourism magnet in the states. I just have to keep my fingers crossed and hope that one day I'll cross paths with the many people I've met.

Until next time,
Molly

---

Photos

Subway
The very overwhelming Tokyo (and outer cities) subway system.

My bag
...for three and a half weeks