Daibutsu
I made a series of pledges in a blog post a few weeks ago. One of those pledges was to travel somewhere every weekend. I am glad to say, with another weekend having come and gone, I haven’t forsaken the writer/reader relationship. The pledge is in tact.
On Saturday, I took an hour of train hopping down to Kamakura, which was Japan’s capital until 1333. While it suffered from the 1923 Kanto earthquake, Kamakura was spared Allied bombing during World War II allowing for the hilly residential district to house more than 60 intact temples and nearly 19 shrines.
I began my tour by stopping at Jufukiji, one of the five most important Zen temples of the Rinzai sect, which together are known as the Kamakura Gozan. Jufukiji had been rebuilt, as all but two of the five had, but, I decided, if I were to visit any of the 65 temples in Kamakura, why not make one of the five most significant my destination?