11 Places To Visit In Kamakura

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Buddhist Temple (7)
Temple (2)
Commercial Street (1)
Scenic Routes (1)

1. Kotoku-in (Great Buddha)

1 km from city center

Buddhist Temple

The Great Buddha has sat in the open here since a storm took the hall around it in 1498, and at 11.3 metres of bronze it is the reason most people come to Kamakura. It was cast in 1252. For a small extra charge you can step inside the statue and see how the bronze plates were joined. It is a short walk from Hase station, and the courtyard fills by mid-morning.

Top Attraction

1 km from city center

Temple

Kamakura's founding shrine, laid out in 1180 and approached along the Dankazura, a raised cherry-lined path running up the middle of the main avenue. Entry is free and the grounds open from six in the morning. One thing to know before you go looking for it: the thousand-year-old ginkgo beside the stone stairs came down in a storm in 2010.

Top Attraction

1 km from city center

Buddhist Temple

A hillside temple above the sea, built around a nine-metre wooden Kannon with eleven heads. The terrace partway up gives the best view in Kamakura, out over the town to Sagami Bay. Four hundred yen. It is best known for its hydrangeas in June, when the paths get busy enough that the temple has used timed tickets, so check before you go.

2 km from city center

Buddhist Temple

Around two thousand moso bamboo stalks behind a small Zen temple, and the reason to come is the tea house inside the grove: four hundred yen to enter, six hundred more for matcha and a sweet, drunk sitting among the stems. It opens nine to four and shuts in bad weather. Tea tickets stop selling when it gets crowded, so come early.

1 km from city center

Commercial Street

Three hundred and sixty metres of shops and street food running from the station up towards the shrine, and the most direct introduction to Kamakura you can get. Around two hundred and fifty businesses squeeze into it, selling everything from senbei to Kamakura-bori lacquerware. It is close to impassable at weekends: the parallel Dankazura path is the escape.

2 km from city center

Buddhist Temple

Japan's oldest Zen training monastery, founded in 1253 and ranked first of Kamakura's five. The grounds climb steadily to the Hansobo shrine, guarded by long-nosed tengu statues, with a ridge view at the top. Five hundred yen. The climb is a genuine two hundred and fifty steps, and the Ten-en hiking trail carries on from behind the shrine.

7. Engaku-ji

2 km from city center

Buddhist Temple

Second of Kamakura's five great Zen temples and the first thing you meet stepping off the train at Kita-Kamakura, which makes it the natural start to the northern temple walk. Its Shariden is the only National Treasure building in Kanagawa and the bell dates to 1301. Five hundred yen. Walk south to Kencho-ji rather than doubling back.

2 km from city center

Buddhist Temple

Locals call it the hydrangea temple, and about ninety five percent of what grows here is the pale blue Hime-Ajisai, which is why the colour looks so uniform in June. The round Window of Enlightenment frames the garden behind it. Five hundred yen. Worth knowing: the rear garden is not normally open, only for irises in June and autumn colour.

1 km from city center

Temple

A shrine inside a cave, entered through a tunnel cut into the rock, where visitors wash coins and notes in the spring water in the belief that money rinsed here will multiply. Buy incense at the entrance, offer at the main shrine, then borrow a basket for the washing. Free. The catch is getting there: a steep twenty-five minute climb from the station.

0 km from city center

Scenic Routes

A ten-kilometre narrow-gauge line from Kamakura to Fujisawa that threads between houses close enough to see into their gardens, then runs out along the coast. It averages about twenty-two kilometres an hour, which is rather the point. Treat it as transport with a view, and use it to reach Hase for the Great Buddha.

2 km from city center

Buddhist Temple

Kamakura's oldest temple, founded around 734, and first on the Bando pilgrimage of thirty-three Kannon temples. The draw is a thatched hall and the moss-covered stone staircase climbing to it. Three hundred yen, open nine to four. It sits five minutes from Hokoku-ji, and the bus out east only really makes sense if you do both in one trip.