To The Beach!!!

Today may have been my favorite day so far on my trip.  I truly had a lot of fun today although I walked way to much and really want to crawl into bed and sleep.  However, I will fight the urge to sleep (I actually slept a bunch on the train today so I'm basically Japanese now.) and share with you all what I did today.

Today my group took a trip to one of the nation's Big Buddhas with 20-30 Waseda students.  After looking at the Buddha and taking some pictures we headed to the beach for lunch.  At this point I had walked a lot and stood for about an hour straight on the train ride.  At the beach, myself and my friends from Oregon, Bryce and Ryan, went for a refreshing swim in the ocean.  The water was actually pretty warm (although to the Japanese kids it is apparently freezing) so swimming was super fun.  While eating and walking on the beach a hawk swooped down to try and take my sandwich so that was pretty crazy!  After the beach we went to Enoshima, an island that is connected to the mainland by a bridge.  Here I seriously walked up like five 30 step staircases to reach a shrine, but I achieved enlightenment along the way so it was chill. Just kidding.  Enoshima was very beautiful and was a fun time, but very tiring.  After standing most of the way home and walking more I was pretty tired, but it was well worth it.

me and the locals

 big Buddha + me and Tomoyuki

 Myself and Kavon, an oregon group member

 enoshima

 the first of many staircases

 the view from above

sun setting at enoshima (Bondon Kawamoto, master photographer)