Our Japan Trip-Finally!

Well here it is at last! We have finally gotten our pictures back from our Japan trip. Rob's parents sent us on a vacation to Japan as a birthday gift about 2 1/2 years ago, but we forgot our camera (of course). Rob's uncle Richard lent us his camera while on the trip, but didn't get us the cd with the pictures until now. We stayed at his uncle Richard and aunt Sechi's house in Kamakura, Japan. They were such gracious hosts, and we had a wonderful trip. Japan is beautiful, as I'm sure you will see in the pictures that follow.

This was at the fox shrines. A Japanese past tradition was to pray to fox gods. I think a few people still continue this tradition. The shrines are located in a beautiful green hilly area, so we got to hike up and down lots of stairs during our visit there :).

We visited a Japanese cemetary. It was really beautiful.

This is a view from the top of a very big mountain that we climbed with Richard. Richard doesn't own a car, so he enjoys walking everywhere he needs to go. As such, we got excellent exercise while we were there. In one day, we climbed up and over a mountain, walked to the coast, and then climbed back up the mountain and went home. We stopped at a little mountaintop restaurant on the way back where we ate fresh bamboo and some other Japanese foods. The Japanese love to eat bamboo. There are bamboo trees everywhere in Japan. I was not a big fan, but Rob really liked it.

Another beautiful mountain view.

We didn't take a picture of them, unfortunately, but we visited Japan at a perfect time of the year when the cherry blossoms were out. It was a beautiful scene walking down the streets and seeing white and pink blossoms everywhere.

This is another picture from the fox shrines.

We found this critter one morning in Richard and Sechi's house where we were staying. The spiders are so big there that you can actually hear them running across the walls. I was really scared, but Richard actually likes to have them in his house to eat the other bugs. The spiders there are not poisonous luckily, just very big. I saw two big spiders like this in the house during our stay there.

These are two Japanese boys that we toured around with.

This is the beach that we hiked over the mountain to. It was a beautiful and refreshing stop after a long hike. There were a lot of birds there flying overhead. Richard said that the birds are not shy there. He had one fly down and grab a hamburger right out of his hands once.

This was one of my favorite stops-Big Buddha.

Richard put us up at this really beautiful, expensive hotel one night. I wish we would have taken a picture of our room. It was very lavish and amazing.

A scene while walking down the streets.

More pictures at the fox shrine. Arches are good luck to the Japanese. This entire walkway was lined with painted wooden arches.

These were our wonderful hosts Richard and Sechi (Rob's uncle and aunt). Poor Richard split his head open while we were there. He had to wear a netted cap while his wound healed.




This place was absolutely gorgeous. It reminded me of a scene right out of a fairytale.

This is Sechi and me. Behind us are the famous bamboo.

I wanted a picture with this Japanese lady all dressed up, but I didn't realize that in exchange for a picture, they expected us to go inside the store behind her and buy things.

The above three pictures are at the beautiful Japanese gardens that we visited.

This is a picture of a beautiful building in Chinatown.

The Japanese Gardens

Here we are at a Denny's restaurant in Japan. It was quite fancy for a Denny's. The American food was a very welcome sight to me as I had a hard time eating the traditional Japanese food.