Today was Coming-of-Age Day in Japan. This day is for boys and girls to celebrate that they reached the age of adulthood, witch is twenty in Japan. You can find a lot of girls wearing the most beautiful kimono's. In the morning there is a ceremony at the city hall, but afterwards they often also attend a special ceremony at a Shinto shrine as well, which means you have the biggest chance to find them near one. Because Joost wanted to see Kamakura, we all decided to go there and do some sight-seeing there and enjoy the kimono's along the way. When we arrived we decided to go to the Dai-butsu (Great Buddha of Kamakura) first before going to a shrine. It was not far so we decided to go on foot. We expected to find some nice shops on our way (it is a touristic attraction), but except a knife shop and some stores that seemed a bit lost there was not much at all. When we came near a shrine which was nearby the stores appeared and even some riksha (a two-seating cart pulled by a man). We continued our way and found the Buddha statue. It was a nice sight indeed, and quite busy. After some pictures and a visit to the inside of the statue, we continued our walk and decided to take the hiking path across the mountain(s) to reach the next temples.

The path began with a big staircase (with many more to come). It was a nice walk and we saw many people on our way who said Konnichiwa every time they passed us, of course we greeted them back as well. On our way we enjoyed the nice scenery and little squirrels who were called "Lisu" (which is actually the Japanification of the second half of the Latin name Sciurus Lis). We even found an orange tree full of them. Apparently they like the oranges, they put their entire head inside them while eating! A very strange sight. After a while we arrived at the Zeniarai Benten, which was a quite nice temple, but unfortunately no girls in kimono here. The entrance had a small gate that lead trough a cave to the temple. This was a very nice place but it was way too busy to really enjoy the scenery. The queue for a simple coin-throw was blocking almost everything. A part of the temple was under a ledge of a mountain, we had never seen something like that before. There was a funny scene were a man was waving his money trough the incense smoke (not burning them) for some kind of cleaning ritual. He was waving it trough a big round metal thing were a fire was burning together with some incense. Not sure what this was called, but it sure looked kind of strange. (When looking it up afterwards, the temple is famous for the "coin-washing". Every coin (or bill) 'washed' will double in the next year.)

We took the hiking trail again, but on our way to the Jyufukuji temple we seemingly did not take the regular route because the number of people we met became very slim and at one point we even had to walk besides a cemetery and a very small path trough a rock, but eventually we arrived. After the normal tourist stuff like taking pictures we continued to Tsurugaoka Hachimangu which was close by. That temple is the most well-known temple of Kamakura and a very big one too. We were a bit later than expected, since the hiking trail took a bit longer with all the sight-seeing, but it was still crowded with a lot of people. Here we finally saw the girls in kimono, and some great pictures were taken. We even saw a part of a ceremony being held in the small building in front of the big stairs to the temple. Here we saw that the boys were dressed as well in a traditional costume, but all looked the same compared to the colorful girls. After a visit we went to the shopping street to find the omiyage of Kamakura, dove-shaped cookies in a yellow package with a white dove logo. We bought some last time and we really liked it (Joost sill had to try) so we wanted to buy some. We found the shop and explored the rest of the street and shops for some time after. We found a very nice shop with bamboo vases. When we wanted to have dinner, we went to an okonomiyaki restaurant called Horetaro. We must say it was the best Okunamiyaki EVER! We put it in our best-dish-list and really like to visit it again in the future. After dinner we went home, watched a movie, finished a game and went to bed content with our daily adventures.