Kamakura

With FC Barcelona due to play in the Club World Cup in Yokohama, I managed to get a game ticket for the big event on 17 December. So I spent the day before the game in Kamakura, a seaside resort town 30 minutes south of Yokohama by train.

There's a bit of everything to suit all kinds of visitors: long narrow streets lined with snack food vendors and shops selling crafts, rustic temples with gardens and cemeteries, bamboo groves, hiking trails with hilltop views, and a one-of-a-kind mammoth buddha statue that is the town's main attraction. Wherever I went, I wasn't far from two or three hawks black kites (see edit) circling above, constantly cawing.