So, this last weekend I went to Kamakura for the day. Actually, it was kind of a date, and the girl already thought I was kind of weird (she is too, so that's just the way things go), so I was thinking about playing down the whole treasure hunting thing - but I came across such a good opportunity that I couldn't really pass it up.

You see, there's a graveyard there that I really like. It's been used for 100s of years, and it's kind of famous, so we weren't the only ones tooling around it taking photos (although I had to do some convincing - she's not keen on the idea of graveyards). However, we WERE the only ones searching for treasure. It was LADEN with the stuff too, as such places often are. For time immemorial grave goods have been a prime source of treasure for the unscrupulous. Being SLIGHTLY more respectful of the dead than the tomb-robbers of old, we decided to limit ourselves to bits and pieces found on the ground.

The graves here in Japan are usually furnished with various cups and utensils for holding offering to the dead. Over time, some of these are dropped and break. As you walk up the approach to the graveyard you start to notice the sparkle of glaze among the more usual pebbles. Among the graves, they are quite numerous, but as you go downhill - away from the graveyard itself (it's set in about 4 acres of forest, with various trails), they peter out. We decided to concentrate on these lower finds, on the hypothesis that they would have taken longer to make their way down, and must therefore be older (it's kind of hard to date them, as by the glaze they could have been made yesterday, or 400 years ago).

Anyway, we had quite a bit of luck - in actuality we could have removed bucket-loads - and below you can see my finds. The photos of the lower trails failed badly (I'd somehow managed to get a smudge on the lens, which was unapparent on the tiny screen, but sadly apparent on the photos themselves), but there are some photos of the graveyard itself.

Anyway, it was an entirely enjoyable day, albeit an odd theme for a date (We laughed ourselves sick trying to figure out a reasonable way for her to tell her family and friends "we went on a date to Kamakura and spent the afternoon in a graveyard picking up broken cups"). Well worth a day's tasking.