KamakuRAIN

Back in June, in the middle of the much-loved rainy season, the duck and I grabbed our favorite travel buddy and went on a little outing to Kamakura – a beautiful coastal city near Tokyo that is filled with tourists and surfers on sunny weekends. The duck and I are suckers for sunshine – lots of it! – but because we’re smart, we decided to not cancel our trip despite the optimistic prediction of non-stop rain on that day; if your shoes are already soaked when you start your adventure there’s nothing to lose, really, eh?
Equipped with our Enoden (the cute little local railway) day-pass we went on a little adventure at one of my favorite places around Tokyo. Without much further explanation, here are some impressions of our rainy (and weirdly cozy) Kamakura excursion!

Accompanied by our new friend, constant rain, we came across lots of train enthusiasts (a.k.a. our soulmates) at a scenic train crossing and walked through the popular Komachi Street (I took a very similar photo of the street sign on a beautiful evening in August some years ago) in search of a nice cafe to rest our wet feet in. We also enjoyed the famous Hydrangea display at Hasedera that, usually, if it is sunny, you have to line up for, even on weekdays. With our rainy friend on our side we got to enter and grab a direly needed free fan without any wait time – lucky us! This is what we found:

Apart from getting to admire all those beautiful rain-kissed flowers, we also loved learning about the wishes of visitors from all over the world that were written on shells and wooden plaques at the base of the temple. If you ever go to a temple that is popular among tourists and have time to spare I highly recommend spending some of it spying on other people’s lives and deepest desires, such as growing taller, becoming a superhero or that their son finally finds love.
It’s hard to miss that, despite the rain, this was one of the duck and my favorite day trips in Japan. In our humble opinion a trip to Kamakura should be on every Tokyo travel itinerary!
You simply have to drop by this dewtiful place – water you waiting for?!