Bamboo Forest

A couple of 51 wives and I made a quick trip to Kamakura this week, so that one of them who is a photographer could get a couple shots for a magazine. (Tammy Ward Photography…check it out!) Would I pass up an opportunity to do a little site seeing in Japan? Hmmm…that’s a tough one, NOPE!!!

It is sooooooo hot here, so a couple hours in the sun will just about do anybody in. (Which is why I say “quick trip”) We went and said hello to the Great Buddha, (literally hi and bye) then sought out to find a place none of us had ever been to before. Thank goodness for I-phones and the map application, cause we found it (seriously I don’t know how people get anywhere without it)…

Our destination: The Kamakura Bamboo Garden and Hokokuji Temple, a tourist spot definitely worth visiting.

The bamboo is plentiful, (and scarily large) and all the green and shade are quite refreshing!

Tammy

Jessica

Despite the heat, it wouldn't be a Japanese tourist spot without some Green Tea. The charming tea hut was part of the ambiance...gotta pay the extra yen for a tea break in front of the lush forest! That's some Zen for your yen!

A steaming bowl of green tea, complete with 2 sugar candies...Jess popped them in her mouth and ate them by themselves, I put them in my tea for extra sugar...don't know which one of us was right?!? Tammy was last to get her tea and asked what she was supposed to do with hers? We both shrugged...who knows...Tammy followed my lead, cause tea is always better with little bit of sugar right? (That's what you get when you live in a foreign country and can't understand their ways, yet don't know the language in order to ask when you are skeptical!!!)

Green tea ice cream...a treat that never gets old! It makes me such a happy happy girl! (As Tammy and Jess can testify to... considering I see it and HAVE to have it every time!)

Tammy literally pulled over on the side of the road putting her emergency blinkers on while I ran over to a vender that was selling my favorite Japanese dessert...clearly it WAS an emergency!)

Despite getting the Japanese X (meaning "NO") for stepping off the path (ok, so I hopped the rope for a photo...big deal!) it was a fun trip! With over 2,000 Moso-bamboo (the biggest species of bamboo in existence) to see, it is picture worthy and a "must-return to" place for me!