Kamakura day trip from Tokyo: the honest timings

A Kamakura day trip from Tokyo takes about an hour each way, by car or by JR train. Getting there is the easy part. The day falls apart in the middle, between the Great Buddha and Enoshima, where most itineraries assume a tram ride that in practice includes a queue.

The short version

Kamakura sits about 50km south of Tokyo on Sagami Bay. It was the seat of government for roughly 150 years from 1185, which is why a town of 170,000 people has this many significant temples in it. Everything worth seeing is inside a few square kilometres, so the distances look trivial on a map. They are not trivial in practice, because the two things you came for sit at opposite ends of a single-track tram line.

Train fares and journey times are indicative and move with the timetable. Check JR East and Enoden before you travel.

Getting there is not the problem

The JR Yokosuka Line runs from Tokyo Station to Kamakura in about an hour, direct, no changes. It is a good train. If you are staying near Tokyo Station or Shinagawa and you want to see two or three temples and go home, take it. This article is not an argument that trains are bad.

Our own car leaves the hotel at half eight and is at Kotoku-in by ten. That includes collecting you from the lobby and loading, so the road time is similar to the train. On a Saturday morning the Yokohama-Yokosuka road adds fifteen or twenty minutes, and we plan for it rather than pretend it does not happen.

The Enoden is where the day goes

The Enoshima Electric Railway runs from Kamakura to Fujisawa along the coast. It is a hundred-year-old line, mostly single track, four cars long, and it threads between houses close enough to see into kitchens. It is genuinely one of the nicest short train rides in Japan and you should ride it at least once.

It is also the bottleneck. Two of its stops are the two stops everyone wants: Hase, for the Great Buddha and Hase-dera, and Kamakurakokomae, the level crossing from the opening credits of Slam Dunk, which now draws a standing crowd of people photographing a level crossing. On a fine weekend afternoon the queue to board at Hase backs up along the platform and you watch trains go past full. The riding time from Hase to Enoshima is about twenty minutes. The waiting is the variable, and it is the reason a plan with five stops in it turns into three.

By road the same stretch is about twenty-five minutes, and it is a nicer twenty-five minutes than it sounds, because the coast road runs with the sea on your right the whole way and Enoshima grows in the windscreen.

What is actually in Kamakura

The Great Buddha at Kotoku-in. Eleven metres of bronze, cast in 1252, sitting outdoors since 1495 because the hall built around it was washed away by a tsunami and never rebuilt. That fact is the whole reason it looks the way it does. You can go inside it for a small extra fee. Twenty minutes is enough unless you want the inside.

Hase-dera is seven minutes' walk downhill and worth more time than people give it. Climb to the terrace for the view over the bay. In June the hydrangea path up the hillside is the busiest thing in Kamakura and they issue timed tickets for it, so go early in the day or accept the wait.

Komachi-dori is the shopping street running north from Kamakura Station. It is busy and a bit touristy and it is also where lunch is. Shirasu, the tiny whitebait pulled out of Sagami Bay, is the local thing, served raw if the boats went out and boiled if they did not.

Tsurugaoka Hachimangu sits at the top of the avenue that the whole town is laid out around. Walk up the middle approach rather than arriving at the side and the geometry makes sense.

Enoshima is a small island joined to the mainland by a bridge, with a shrine, caves at the far end, and a lookout tower. On a clear day Mt. Fuji is across the water to the west, and in winter it is clear more often than in summer.

A day that fits

This is the shape we use, and the timings are the real ones from our Kamakura and Enoshima day rather than an idealised version:

• 08:30 Your hotel. Pickup is available in Tokyo or the Kamakura area. A Tokyo pickup and return uses the full 10-hour schedule.
• 10:00 The Great Buddha. Eleven metres of bronze. The hall around it washed away in 1498 and was never rebuilt.
• 11:15 Hase-dera. Up the steps for the view over the bay, and the hydrangea path if it is June.
• Midday Kamakura’s Zen temples. Continue to Kencho-ji, Meigetsu-in or Hokokuji’s bamboo garden, depending on pace and season.
• 14:15 Tsurugaoka Hachimangu. At the top of the avenue, on the axis the whole town is built around.
• Afternoon Enoshima. Visit Enoshima Beach and the Shonan coast, with Yuigahama Beach included in the live route.
• Evening Your hotel. Return to your selected drop-off. Exact timing depends on pickup point and traffic.

The booking is 10 hours for a Tokyo pickup and return. Treat the itinerary as a menu: traffic, seasonal queues and the time you spend at each temple determine how many stops fit.

When to go

June for the hydrangeas at Hase-dera, and expect company. November for the maples, which in Kamakura turn late, often past the middle of the month. Winter for the Fuji view from Enoshima, because the air is clearer. August is hot, humid and crowded on the coast, and the beaches south of Kamakura are full.

Weekdays are materially quieter than weekends at every single one of these sites. If you have any flexibility at all in your Tokyo week, spend it here rather than somewhere else.

If you drive yourself, read this first

Kamakura is a medieval town that was never laid out for cars, and on a good weekend the through roads jam solid. The car parks at Kotoku-in and Hase-dera are small, they fill early, and the queue to get into them spills back onto a road that has nowhere to put it. Hase in particular funnels everything through streets barely wide enough for two cars with people walking down the middle of them.

This is the argument for a driver rather than a rental. Ours drop you at the gate, go and deal with the parking problem somewhere else, and come back when you call. If you are set on driving yourself, go on a weekday, arrive before nine, and use the larger car parks near Kamakura Station rather than trying to park at each temple.

Adding Yokohama on the way home

Yokohama is not part of the published Bókun itinerary. If it matters to your day, ask before booking so the team can confirm what can fit inside the 10-hour charter rather than dropping a Kamakura or Enoshima stop without warning.

When the car is worth it, and when it is not

Take the train if there are two of you, you are travelling light, you want two or three stops, and you are happy to let the day drift.

Take a car if any of these are true: there are four or more of you, so the per-head cost crosses over; you are changing hotels that day and have cases; you are travelling with someone who cannot do several kilometres on foot and a queue on a hot platform; or you want both the Great Buddha and Enoshima without watching the clock from two in the afternoon onwards.

Our Kamakura and Enoshima day is 10 hours door to door from your Tokyo hotel, up to 13 people, from ¥62,117 for the whole car rather than per person. The driver speaks English, the cases stay in the boot, and the order of stops can be adjusted with the driver. Driver-guides and guided tour options are also available; ask us to confirm the service and price before booking. If you want to see what fits in the car before you book, the fleet and luggage page has the measurements.

Common questions

If you would rather build the day around something else entirely, a wedding photo stop, a surf shop in Shichirigahama, a graveyard someone in the family wants to visit, that is what the custom charter is for.