KITA-KAMAKURA

I can't remember exactly how many times I've been there, or even what I had always done, but walking around this place always put me in an instant good mood.

We were too early for the famous purple ajisai.

But stumbled upon the bunny and turtle in B's photo. (B! I've just realized, the turtle's moved!)

A signboard for coffee among the many residential homes.

Ishikawa coffee.

As beautiful as what I had expected.

We were in between breakfast and lunch, and so had the place all to ourselves.

We only walked a little bit more.

Before deciding that we could do lunch again.

Kyorai-an (去来庵）

A Jap friend once told me that if I wanted really good food, go to the small shops that don't have a variety. This one offered nothing but beef stew, and it was good, so good.

HAKONE + KITA KAMAKURA REVISITED

I have been really lucky this Tokyo trip, made some new friends and met up with lots of old ones. Some of you might remember Chiemi, it happened that she was free during that period of time too so we went for lots of walks together. Above are the photos taken while we were in Hakone, coincidentally the first time I went there she was with me too. It was a relaxed trip, we took our time with everything and didn't do that much except to have some seriously good tonkatsu (it was the famous kurobuta or black pig meat) and go to the Little Prince Museum.

Below are the shots from Kita-Kamakura. The 2 of us discussed why we love Kamakura so much and somehow it's hard to pinpoint. It might just be the old and idyllic atmosphere of the place. Sadly we didn't have time for the Enoden (Eno train) this time round, I would have liked to see the Pacific waters again.

The last 2 photos are the main reason why we dropped at Kita Kamakura, it's a cat art gallery called "Neko no Hako" (read "Cat Box"). The owner is an architect turned artist and I love his paintings of his house cats (he has 5 of them) against the Kamakura landscape. Five of them are sitting on the walls of my home now.