KAMAKURA VISIT FOR SAKURA IN THE RAIN STORM
Wednesday, 23 April 2014
As I mentioned in the previous post, this year I had one of the most memorable sakura viewing ohanami experiences ever in Kamakura with my Hawaiian friend Aron. We had planned it from a week earlier and the weather was going to be okay however the day started raining. Still according to the weather forecast the rain was supposed to stop around lunch time so I thought "good" and didn't need to wear my gum boots "good".
We met in Kamakura just before lunch time but it was still raining. There was no way we could have a picnic up in the mountain where we were going to go so we decided to have lunch before we start our journey, or adventure more like. At this point I still thought that the rain will stop by the time we have eaten. Luckily I remembered this cafe called OXIMORON which I always wanted to check out but always forgot about when I went to Kamakura so there we went.
I didn't even know what kind of food they serve here, but it was a curry place. It was so nice. Beautiful space with great light coming in, even on a rainy day it was really lovely. Pity I didn't take a photo of the cafe space! The above photo is their little shop space at the front where they sell beautiful Japanese tablewares and zakka. The food was divine, I really enjoyed my curry with full of fresh herbs on top: coriander, mitsuba, shiso (ooba) and spring onion. DELICIOUS!
Tableware they use in this cafe was designed by one of my favourite porcelain artists Yumiko Iihoshi (I posted about her work and then shop here) and this series is named OXIMORON, the name of the cafe. I love this OXIMORON series so much and I always wanted to find out what this place is like which Yumiko Iihoshi made the series of tablewares for. So that was really great too.
It was still raining when we were leaving this place. Actually, it looked much worse. But anyway we kept on going as planned, to go on hiking in the pouring rain!
It was the Genjiyama Park we headed, where is known as one of the most beautiful and popular sakura spots around. Well, not on the day like this obviously.
But, it was worth it!
When we reached up on the mountain I received a notification on my phone.
Severe.Weather.Alert.
It was seriously raining, was probably the best and the worst day to come here, we laughed. Hahaha. We almost continued to take even more serious hiking course but we were not crazy enough to keep going and instead we decided to just head back the way we came down to the city.
I don't know how it happened (must have been my choice) but we then took the cute Enoden tram/train to nowhere and then walked back to Kamakura in. the. pouring. rain. along the beach.
We may have picked the worst day ever for all these but it was really fun. Thank you for the wonderful and crazy company Aron! Let's do this again! (NOT) hahaha, well on a nicer day.
