Day Trip to Nara
Only a brief update because I am writing this on my phone connected to wifi.
While in Kyoto I took a day trip to Nara which is a smaller town about 45 minutes away by shinkansen (bullet train). Nara is famous for two things: temples and deer. At this point in the trip I had already seen a ton of temples. I was of the mindset if you have seen one temple you have seen them all. As far as deer go, I have seen plenty in America.
Despite this I was still persuaded by fellow travelers to make the trip. I am very happy I did.
Hamby wrote a blog post about the deer already, but I will explain again. The people of Nara believe deer are sacred messengers from the gods. As a result they have created a giant park where the deer are protected. Everyday thousands of tourists flock to the park to see the sights and to feed the deer. The deer have nothing to do with their American cousins. These are totally unafraid of people and have no natural predators. They can be seen chasing small children around to steal food and shitting everywhere. That is pretty much all they do. However, despite smelling like a zoo, the park was very pretty.
It turned out I was wrong about having seen one temple and the rest pretty much being the same. Two of the most incredible temples I have seen so far were in Nara. The first was the oldest known structure in Japan. The second was a giant structure housing a fifty foot statue of Buddha. Unfortunately the English signs did not explain very much about where it came from or when it was built, but it was definitely incredible.
All in all Nara was well worth the trip. When I get a chance I will post pictures of the Buddha statue.
very cool – can’t wait to see the pics.