Hydrangeas in Kamakura

For reasons that seem ludicrously trivial in retrospect, I never made it to Kamakura while the hydrangeas were in bloom our first two Junes in Japan.

Fortune smiled on me this year.  The hydrangea brackets were just starting to blush when we took James, Emily, and Kate to Hase-dera early in the month.  Two weeks later Meagan My-Knitting-Mentor and I spent a glorious day touring the grounds of Engaku-ji and Meigetsu-in, two temples in Kita (north) Kamakura, with Hiroko, Hisayo, and Kayoko.

Engaku-ji, built in 1282, has expanded over the centuries and now encompasses a whopping 60,000 square meters or nearly 15 acres.  (I did the math for you.  You are most welcome.)

Along the left side of the grounds is the Butsunichi-an, a subordinate temple built as a mausoleum for Hojo Tokimune, the 6th Shogun of the Kamakura era.

We paid 100 yen each to enter the garden of Ensoku-den, one of three hermitages on the Butsunichi-an property.  This garden is famous for two magnolia trees donated in 1931 by a Chinese author, Lu Hsun, when he was a medical student in Japan.  What I will remember about that garden, though, is sipping tea out of beautiful pottery bowls with my friends.

To get from Engaku-ji to Meigetsu-in, we strolled down a shady residential lane with throngs of Japanese couples and families.  Peeking at the houses and faces along the way was as rewarding as feasting my eyes on a seemingly infinite variety of hydrangeas.

Meigetsu-in was inaugurated in 1160 so it predates Engaku-ji by more than a century.  I'm not sure what 'inaugurated' means but that's the word used by the authors of An English Guide to Kamakura's Temples & Shrines.  (These are the same authors that tell us Engaku-ji was named for a 'canon' found in a stone arch; I spread this rumor far and wide before it dawned on me they meant to write 'Kannon' instead.)

We had tea at Meigetsu-in as well, this time in paper cups rather than pottery bowls.  The setting more than atoned for the scant amenities.  We sat on a tatami mat, waiting patiently until it was our turn to step through that round window and perch on a low ledge overlooking a meadow.

To get myself situated on that ledge, I momentarily put my foot on a boulder.  There was an interesting bamboo sculpture balanced on the boulder.  I silently commended myself for neither breaking it nor knocking it off the rock.

"That bamboo thingamajig is nice," I remarked to Hiroko. 

With one of the sweetest smiles in all of Japan, she retorted, "It means 'DO NOT STEP ON THIS ROCK'."

Oops.

My Knitting Mentor was so appalled by my cultural faux pas that she subsequently fled the country.