a three hour tour/kama kama kama kama kamakuuura

On Monday at noon my cousin (say it with a French accent) Michael & his girlfriend Allison and I met in Shinjuku for the beginning of our 3 hour tour to Kamakura, described in the books as a little Kyoto, and a political centre in the 12th century, until the 13th century, a short time after the 3rd Shogun was murdered at the base of the 1000 year old tree which can be seen in the 2nd last photo. Because it used to be a centre of power, there are a lot of old temples and statues etc etc etc, like this famous giant golden Buddha that you can even go inside, apparently.

But our day started with us and Michael & Allison's friend from Toronto, Inderpal waiting for Ken, Steve, and Aoi from their hostel, who took some time getting to a different exit that we had to track down in massive Shinjuku station, taking a ridiculous long time at it. THEN THEN THEN, we had to still leave, 1:07 by this time, and of course the woman behind the counter told us the wrong train line to take, so our train started to backtrack after 10 stops. At the next station, the man behind the counter refused to tell us how to get there because he worked for a different train company than the one we were supposed to be on, so we had to travel to a train station with a JR company line. The hilarious thing was that this was all hilarious to our tired, and sometimes hungover brains and our ebbing hungry tummies. Short long story, we got to Kamakura by 3:30pm, hungry so we searched for dinner. All the sites close by 4:30, except one which we took off to after stuffing our bellies. At the shrine, all Tokyo stress was gone before I even knew I really had it, getting something I didn't even know I needed in return. Afterwards we went to a tea house, moving their tables around to fit our giant party, taking the warmers off the pots because we thought we were supposed to, and generally acting like oblivious monkeys (its kinda easy to feel that way sometimes around here). Here is a video of Michael & Allison acting like monkeys. Monday was awesome even as it was total gong show (slang from my roommate Brock in the filthy filthy house I lived in Waterloo if anyone remembers, with the bathroom that was the size of a closet and where shower/toilet water poured into my room from a rusted pipe and where Brock fell down the stairs in a dead drunk and (thank god for) Dana & I took him to a hospital but he refused to stay there and finally we gave up on him as he walked back to our house at 5am with a bleeding head...Dana if you're out there, I'd like to know what you're doing!)