Kamakura+my new sakura-colored friend

Yesterday, me, Hinata, and Lisa took a day trip to Kamakura. Kamakura was the third capital of Japan after Nara and Kyoto. It's famous for its temples and it reminded me a lot of Kyoto.

It took about 45min to get there from Yokohama. Me and Hinata waited for Lisa at the station here:

 The first place we stopped by was a Totoro store. It was so cute.

 We then walked toward a famous shrine. Lisa used to live in Kamakura, so she was our guide. On our way to the shrine, we bought a rice cracker dipped in hot soy sauce for 50￥. I love street vendors!
Hachimangu Shrine:

 We prayed and got our fortunes. This shrine is Kamakura's most famous shrine and is dedicated to the god Hachimangu, the patron god of the Minamoto family who were the the founders of the Kamakura government.
Then we stopped for soft cream! An only Japanese flavor: purple sweet potato+green tea. It was delicious!

 Then we stopped by a neighborhood Buddhist temple.

 Our final stop was the Kamakura Great Buddha, the second tallest Bronze Buddha in Japan.

The insides are hollow and you can go inside for a small fee. There's nothing really exciting inside, but it was shocking when we touched the insides and it was warm! It probably absorbes the warmth of the sunlight since it's made of bronze, but at the same time it was like the statue was alive. It was really beautiful close up.

However, I was quite offended to receive an English version of the ticket to get in. I hate when people look at me and judge that I can only speak English. ESPECIALLY when I speak to them first in Japanese. Frickinfrickin pisses me off.

Sumimasen, eigo wa tabemasen. Nihongo ga tabetai desu. 

[Excuse me, I don't eat English. I want to eat Japanese.]

Overall, though, I really liked Kamakura. It was a really peaceful town with a lot of traditional Japaneseness and lots of things to do. I feel like I could walk down Kamakura streets everyday.

Also, on a side note, the reason that I am even able to write this blog today is because I have bought a new computer! Due to an unfortunate coffee spill incident, my other computer lost most of its keyboard use. For a while, everything else still worked pretty okay. Well--it started spazzing if I did too much multitasking, but other than that, I could use my tablet's floating keyboard to type. However, the other day, when it restarted itself to install some updates, it let out a really loud BEEEEEP and would not start up. So, after only about a year and a half, my laptop was put to rest...may it rest in peace.

But anyways, today, I went to the nearby Tokyu department store to check out the laptops and found a really nice, pink, shiny, and compact Sony Vaio computer for about $850. As a plus, I was able to talk to the store attendant in Japanese☆ Ahh this computer is so cute. Here's kind of what it looks like:  

It's a perfect size that can fit inside my purse, it has a cd drive so I can install my tablet and play CDS and DVDS, it's all in Japanese so when I get back home, only I will be able to use it, and the keyboard isn't indented so it won't get as dirty as my other keyboard did. Plus, the system is Windows 7, so it's the same system as my other laptop was. The only thing is that the Japanese keyboard is a little bit different than the American one, so it's gonna take some time to get used to, but that's ok.

It was my first time investing in such an expensive appliance, but it was kind of interesting doing all the paper work and such on my own. And in Japanese. Hopefully, I can make this computer last a long long time...