Sunny Beach Saturday in Kamakura

The hike to our house

I woke up to a warm and sunny day, and was psyched to get to the beach! After our last hotel breakfast, Stefan and I set out for the coast! I left my giant bag at the hotel and just packed a change of clothes and a toothbrush, and was happy to be headed towards the ocean.

A little more rural than Yokohama

Since Stefan had already been to Kamakura the week before, he got to play tour guide. It was kind of great to be guided for once, and I had no idea where we were going, staying, or what we were doing! Stefan had booked beds for us through Airbnb (the website I had used to rent out my extra room in the past!), and I was looking forward to being out of the city, out of the hotel, and sightseeing.

Dead end? Go up!

We made it to Kamakura in about 40 minutes, took the bus a few stops from the station, and got out in the middle of a residential neighborhood. I was so lucky that Stefan had prepared, because the place would have been IMPOSSIBLE to find. I cannot accurately describe how out of the way it was. First, we walked down a few winding “streets,” but the streets of the little town more closely resembled paved sidewalks in dimensions.

The view!

 After winding through back neighborhoods, we came to what I would have described as a dead end before I knew any better. The street stopped and there were only driveways and a small winding staircase that lead up a hill. We attempted to ask people about the address, but most addresses in Japan don’t make any sense (many are numbered in the order they were built and not in the order they appear on the street), so we decided to take our chances and hike up the hill.

It's clear boys live here

We never found the numbered house, but I found a house at the top of the hill with a lockbox on the door…Stefan tried the combination he had been emailed, and miraculously it worked! On the way to the house, Stefan told me that our host had been in a motorbike accident and was spending the night in the hospital, so we might have the whole house if the roommate wasn’t around.


When we walked into the house I instantly knew that it was solely occupied by young men. There was crap everywhere, the bathroom was less than clean, and I won’t even give you details about the state of the kitchen. Our rooms were on the 2nd floor, and when we got up there it was about 98 degrees.

The beach!

We were anxious to get right out of there, so we donned bathing suits and escaped as fast as possible! Stefan led us through town to the beach. We strolled past SO MANY temples! Kamakura is a popular day trip from Tokyo and most people travel there to see the temples, and even more go in June to see the blooming hydrangeas. It was incredibly hot, and by the time we reached the water, we both threw down our things and got right in!

BIG Buddha

The beach itself was surrounded by green hills and was full of families and surfers. The water was perfect, and after swimming out to the buoys and back, we sat on shore watching the kids and the birds and I just enjoyed hearing the waves. I realized it had been a while since I had even swum in the ocean, and I was glad I decided to skip a day of Kyoto and see the sea!



Once we felt like we were getting overly roasted and hungry we left the sand in search of shade and food…on the way we got distracted by no less than 4 or 5 huge temples. We got totally caught up in sight seeing, and ended up heading in the direction of one of Kamakura’s main attractions: the giant Buddha!

Stefan hadn’t seen it yet, so we went inside the temple that housed the Diabutsu. It was actually pretty cool! He was huge and looked incredibly wise and peaceful! Apparently you can even walk inside him for a small fee, but Stefan inquired to some other tourists who said there was nothing inside and that it was not worth the wait.

Stefan hiking

After seeing the giant Buddha, we left the temple and found a hiking trail and decided to go for it. Unfortunately, we still hadn’t found any food, but in the name of adventure, and escaping the insane crowds, we hiked up the hills around the city. It was great! From the top we had a view of the little cove we had swam in, and we toured a few smaller, empty temples on the way.


We both enjoyed the flowers and the views and the serenity, but we were starving by the end, and made the long-ish walk back to the main part of town to find food! We had some yummy ramen and a well-deserved cold beer. But after the meal we were hot, tired, and salty from the long day, so we went back to the house to get cleaned up.

On the way, Stefan was tempted by a Japanese barbeque place. He grabbed a skewer of chicken breast and a skewer of chicken hearts (not even close to the weirdest choice available). He polished off the first one, and as we started walking away with the second, something brushed by my ear – before I even knew what happened it was too late!

A hawk had swooped down, tried to grab the skewer right out of his hand, and flew away!! How crazy is that?! The hawk missed and the skewer landed at our feet, so the bird kept circling for a while. I grabbed the skewer and stuck it into the top of a nearby chain link fence, but the hawk gave up and flew away.

After the excitement, we walked all the way through the town, back through our little neighborhood, and hiked up our hill to the house. We paused for a few minutes by the little river to feed the GIANT carp and koi swimming in the river – there were even some turtles and ducks that came swimming up, tempted by the bread Stefan chucked to them.

Feeding fishies

We got back to the house, but there was still nobody home….however when I was grabbing my fresh clothes and towel, I spotted something moving – when I stopped to look, I realized it was a HUGE spider.

Evil spider

Look people – I am in no way squeamish or overly afraid of crawly creatures, but this thing was GINORMOUS. It sensed me looking at it, and I’m pretty sure it broke land speed records as it raced around the corner as I screamed like a little girl for Stefan to come look. He seemed even less pleased than I was, and we decided to attempt to kill it. BUUUUUT since it’s Japan, and we had to take our shoes off at the door, we were lacking weapons! Stefan grabbed one of the ubiquitous pillows, aimed, and hurled it at the Godzilla-sized arachnid.

Wonder what the sign says?

Well, he scored a direct hit….but I’m pretty sure the spider palmed the pillow, paused, and hurled it back. After which it scurried down the ceiling of the stairway and out of sight. By this point we were both squeeling like little girls! Stefan tried, unsuccessfully, one more time with the pillow before I was afraid the thing would get away…so I gathered my courage and a Swiffer, and climbed down the stairs, passing under the creepy spider to get a better angle of attack.

It took two tries, a LOT of “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwww!”s, but I finally killed it! Stefan even took the thing outside and pulverized it beyond recognition with my shoe to “make sure it wasn’t playing dead,” hahaha! We went back upstairs, I showered as quickly as possible (I found two more medium spiders IN the shower), and we agreed to escape the house for as long possible.

On the way out, we killed two more and a cockroach for good measure, and ran down the mountain as fast as we could to find a sake strong enough to make the whole “animals attacking us at every turn” situation a bit more acceptable.

We walked down to the ocean to see if there were any beach bar, but all we found were kids lighting fireworks in the sand. I was quite jealous, and when we stopped to grab a travel beer at the convenience store, I grabbed some sparklers! We went back to the beach and watched the other fireworks and lit our little ones, too! I tried to write my name, but evidently my sparkler-handwriting is even worse than my conventionally bad handwriting, and all my pictures were illegible. Stefan on the other hand was quite talented!


He tried to teach me how to improve my skills by showing me how to point the camera at the moon and using its light to paint my name in the dark with a long exposure….but I sucked at it! We ran out of sparklers, so we went back to the main drag to see if there were any bars open in Kamakura.

The town was almost completely deserted, but in desperate search for a bathroom, we walked upstairs to a place that had music and voices floating out onto the street.  It ended up be a cozy little place with big overstuffed chairs, classic rock music, and friendly staff. We had a few shochus, and struck up a conversation with the bartender.


My first question was about the spiders – when asked if the gargantuan size was normal, he said yes. When asked if they were scary, he said no and that from a young age they are taught not to kill them because they “eat the cockroaches.” The prospect of more large spiders and enough cockroaches to sustain the number of spiders we had already dispatched made me order another drink and wish I wasn’t sleeping on the floor….

I'll have....what he's having?

We had a good time chatting with the Japanese bartender and the other patrons, but eventually we got tired and brave enough to make the dark uphill hike to our spider den, so we made the trek back. I will say that I keenly remember not wanting to turn on any lights so that I didn’t see anything, getting into “bed” (aka lying on the floor, with no AC, in the 86 degree room) and hoping I didn’t have any arachnid-inspired dreams.

Sleeping on the floor...

I survived the night…..and all things considered, it was a really awesome day of swimming in the ocean, soaking up the sun, temples and shrines, hiking, and even some fireworks!