Kamakura

Kamakura needs 1 day: the Great Buddha of Kotoku-in, a 13-meter bronze statue standing outdoors since 1495, and the Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu shrine, in a single day, less than an hour by train from Tokyo. March-May and September-November bring the mildest weather. It's inexpensive as a day trip from the capital. It was Japan's de facto military capital during the Kamakura shogunate (1185-1333), the first samurai government in Japanese history, and its Great Buddha, which lost the building that housed it to a 15th-century tsunami and has stood permanently exposed to the elements ever since, is one of the country's most recognizable images.