I had decided that Kamakura would be the very first destination for a long trip this year.
Having stayed here for about a week before I even started working at Early Birds, I have a lot of attachment to this place. I boarded the Shinkansen bound for Yokohama to visit places I wanted to see again and people I wanted to meet once more. The difference from a year and a half ago is that this time, I had my beloved All-City bike with me.
I’ve gotten quite used to Rinko (train transport for bicycles), so the task of "packing the bike into the Rinko bag," which used to take me a while, no longer feels like a chore. The Fairweather Rinko bag I bought in the summer is the type where you just drape it over the bike and cinch the bottom, so the process itself is easy, and because it's large, it covers the saddle well, making it very user-friendly. I also love that the bag itself is compact and lightweight.
From Nagoya, you can arrive in Kamakura in less than two and a half hours. After assembling my bike, I first pedaled toward Guesthouse Kamejikan, where I would be staying tonight, to drop off my luggage. This Kamejikan is one of the places I wanted to visit again and where the people I wanted to see are.
This inn, created by renovating an old folk house with a 90-year history, is located in a town called Zaimokuza, which flourished as a port town during the Kamakura period. Situated about two kilometers from Kamakura station and slightly away from the center, this town still has no convenience stores and is lined with long-established shopping streets and the only remaining public bathhouse in Kamakura. It is also charming for the small, independent shops tucked away here and there—smokehouses, confectionery shops, coffee stands, surf shops, creative cuisine, curry shops, and vegan eateries—as if it were a place where young people are expressing what they truly want to do. The gentle atmosphere that flows here, the different faces of the sea seen from Zaimokuza Beach in the morning and evening, and the time spent at this Kamejikan are all special, exceptional, and never get old.
The people I wanted to see were Masayuki Sakurai, the owner of Kamejikan, and Sumisato Hayashi, a staff member who, along with her husband, forms a unit called "Tabioto" and publishes books filled with photographs and writings from their travels around the world. We had been keeping each other updated via email and the like, but it had been a year and a half since we last met in person. We talked about everything that had happened during that time: my short backpacking trip around the world, things at Circles and Early Birds, ride events, life with bicycles, and the fact that I am baking sweets now. Previously, I was someone who was still wondering what I would do or what I wanted to do next, so I was happy to be able to talk about what I am doing now and what I want to do moving forward like this.
Also, the stories from Sakurai-san and Hayashi-san about their travels around the world and their work on town development through the inn business are always interesting and stimulating. This time, too, we sat around a kerosene stove in the lounge of Kamejikan, which retains its old-fashioned atmosphere with red tiles still intact, and listened to many different stories.
There was one more reason I came to Kamakura. I wanted to visit a confectionery shop that I love and now admire as I have started baking sweets myself! I wanted to eat their sweets! You could call it a journey for sweets. After dropping off my luggage at Kamejikan, I headed straight to "POMPONCAKES BLVD."
This Pompon Cakes shop opened only recently, but it was originally a very interesting and unique confectionery shop where the owner would pack cakes baked at home into a cargo bike and appear around the town of Kamakura. Of course, the cakes in the cargo bike were very popular with the townspeople, and as always, they would sell out immediately.
The brick-and-mortar store is located in a town called Kajiwara, towards the mountains, about 4 kilometers away from Zaimokuza, and it's a place I liked so much that when I first visited, I went two days in a row.
I had decided that the next time I came, I would eat the Savarin, so I ordered it without hesitation. And some carrot cake, too. Now that I actually bake cakes like banana bread and carrot cake myself, I find myself unable to resist trying them whenever I see them.
A Savarin is a French baked sweet; it's a cake where brioche is cut in half, soaked generously in liqueur, and consists of layers of light dough and dough that has soaked up the syrup. You don't see them as often now, but I heard that back in the day, they were a staple in confectionery shops alongside strawberry shortcake. The first Savarin I ever ate was elegant yet somehow nostalgic, and it was absolutely delicious.
I was also able to greet the owner, Tachimichi-san, and received wonderful service. Pompon Cakes has such an exquisite, bright, kind, yet fresh and cool atmosphere that makes you want to linger.
After that, I returned to the area around Kamakura station and stopped by "THE GOOD GOODIES," a small, new-style coffee stand tucked in a back alley that also sells flowers on weekends. I also visited the long-established cafe "Cafe vivement dimanche," which I visited again because of their wonderful taste and truly excellent service, and "AaH Bit," a gluten-free and sugar-free confectionery shop that has opened near Kamejikan.
And there was one more shop I absolutely wanted to visit: "Mill Coffee & Stand," a small coffee stand near Kamejikan opened by a young woman. I couldn't forget how delicious the carrot cake I had here by chance was last time, and when I started baking sweets at Early Birds and was thinking about what kind of cake to make, it naturally crossed my mind that I wanted to bake a carrot cake like that! I've been tinkering with my recipe ever since, aiming for that flavor, so the current carrot cake at Early Birds has its origins here. I ate their carrot cake for the first time in a year and a half, and even though they recently changed the flour to rice flour to suit their customers, it was just as delicious as ever, and I realized once again that I truly love it.
After eating many sweets, receiving great service, and talking with the people at each shop, I learned that even through the same sweets, the final products and the shops themselves change so much depending on what each person aims for and what they place importance on. I want to have a stronger, firmer core regarding what kind of sweets I want to create, what I want to do through them, and what I want to express.
Even now, there are customers who come to buy sweets at Early Birds every day, and seeing their smiles when they say it's delicious—I want to keep baking, never forgetting how happy that makes me!
This time, I revisited the town of Kamakura, where I had walked everywhere on foot a year and a half ago because I hadn't met my bike yet, with my All-City. The seaside where the surface of the water glitters dazzlingly, the slope surrounded by mountain greenery leading to Pompon Cakes, the tunnels you encounter several times, the crowds around the station, and the back alleys—when you ride a bike, the scenery you see is so different. The wind you feel and the scents, too. Both walking and cycling are good. But riding a bike through an unfamiliar town or a town you love but is far away is, after all, incredibly refreshing and fun. It was a whirlwind two-day trip, but I think having a bike made it a sufficiently fulfilling and wonderful two days, with so many places to go and people to meet.
When I was pushing my All-City in the town of Kamakura, a cafe manager who called out to me, "Did you buy that at Blue Lug in Tokyo!?" turned out to be a huge bike lover and a customer who had bought Circles and SimWorks products from our web shop. Or when I was walking along my beloved Zaimokuza Beach and ended up helping the local guys prepare the famous Kamakura product "Zaimokuza Beach Wakame (seaweed)." Such small encounters and exchanges with the local people are also fun.
You have to be a bit considerate on the train and carry the bike inside the station, but because I can spend time like this, I really love bringing my bike along when I go out. Even my luggage—just one day-to-day backpack and one Porcelain Rocket saddlebag—fit my overnight belongings and the massive amount of baked goods I bought, so it was a light and convenient trip. Now, where shall I go next!
Asumi Ueno (Instagram)