These past few weeks have been pretty busy. For new years break this year, I took trips to Himeji, Nara, Osaka, and Kamakura.

Briefly, Kamakura is a small town near Tokyo. It was the location of the government over 1000 years ago and so has a number of interesting sites, including my favorite, the Great Buddha.

Nara was also the seat of the government a number of years ago, before Karakura was. It is very close to Kyoto and is similar in that it has tons of temples and shrines. The most famous of which houses the other Great Buddha statue of Japan.

Osaka is close to Nara and Kyoto. It is the second biggest city in Japan, and was historically the merchant capital of Japan. It’s a concrete jungle like Tokyo, but there are some cool spots, including the castle, which has a very rich history to it and was very important.

Himeji is small castle town, of note for having perhaps the most beautiful and best designed castle in Japan, and also for having a real castle. That is to say, it’s not a fake, built to replace one destroyed in the war. Himeji was bombed quite heavily, but amazingly the castle wasn’t hit.

Anyways, perhaps I’ll write more about these later for people who are interested, but for now pop over the my flickr page to see some pictures of Kamakura. Hopefully I’ll get the rest uploaded soon.

click here —> flickr link