long entery

I returned to Tokyo from Sapporo on the 23rd, and once I got to Tokyo Eki, I headed down on a local train to Kamakura. Kamakura was my favorite city from the entire trip. unbelieveable. On the train ride down I had the good fortune to sit next to a man from New Zealand, and we talked about politics and the state of the world for the four hour leg of the trip that we were together. Quite an interesting man, he dealt with trading in tractors and did most of his work with Japanese. Hadn't learned the langauge though, interestingly enough, he was on the side of the U.S. I everything. he said that he loved the U.S. and what it did for the world (we talked about the hegemonic stability theory), and he said that he was absolutly dumbfounded by all the european countries that continue to rag on the U.S. A very good point of wisdom that he had was that the key thing other people and other nations should do is not to look at what the U.S. does, but what the U.S. Could do. It would be quite possible, he said, for the U.S. to become strongly imperialist, and take things that it wanted, but instead we are willing to play by the rules of the U.N. and instead of following a course that superpowers have historically, we're one of the first to work with the rest of the world. I stayed at a fairly nice hotel in Kamakura, the Kamakura Park Hotel (actually over in the Hase area, but it wasn't too hard to get to). The first day that I was there I rented a bicycle and went to EVERY TEMPLE in the city, which was really quite impressive the sort of ground that I had to cover to be able to do that, but I did it all. The most impressive there was by far the Daibatsu, which is a 131 something ton bronze buddha statue that sits out in the open air. A very popular stop as well. I went down to a surf bar for dinner, had some grilled tuna, and then met some japanese interpreters in the hot tub who had studied english in England. One of them, Yuki, ended up staying a long while beyond her friends, and we had some good conversation. The second day in Kamakura I decided to relax, and spent most of it out on the beach, which lead to the first sunburn I've had all summer (sad to say I'm going to go back to school and not have anything in the way of a tan). The next day I went to Tokyo, but I'll put the rest of that on another entery. -J