We woke up early again today and made our way to Shinjuku station to exchange our JR rail passes. Today we make our first travel blunder...you must have your passport to exchange your rail pass. Oops! We had to go all the way back to Lisa & Lucho's place to retrieve someones passport and then returned to Shinjuku to finish the task. By this time it is almost noon and we decided to give up on Kamakura and instead pay a visit to Kawagoe, a day trip recommended by the Lonely Planet.
Kawagoe is not one of the major tourist destinations in Japan so we had the place to ourselves, as foreigners that is. The town is referred to as "Little Edo" because of the architectural style of several buildings and structures dating back to the Edo period. There is a section in town lined with several black merchant buildings, called kurazukuri, designed to be "fire proof". Well, unfortunately only a few are standing today because fires wiped out a majority of them in the 19th century.
Our other favorite spot in Kawagoe was the Kashiya Yokocho, a small alley packed with candy stores! You know Jon and I both have a sweet tooth! We spent calculated time browsing to make sure we made the best selection...however, soon we realized that most of the so-called candy was made of mochi, red bean paste and/or sweet potato. Not our idea of candy! But we bought a few things anyway and surprisingly it was all good...still not our idea of candy but it tasted good nonetheless.
~Donielle
P.S. You can view more of our trip photos by clicking on the link at the bottom right corner of our blog for picassa web album.
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