Sugoi
Trip Start
Jul 22, 2006
1
59
Trip End
Aug 15, 2010
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Nara, Kinki, Japan
Monday, December 13, 2010
One thing I forgot to mention that happened on our second day in Kansai was how Max proved himself to be a very useful and thoughtful brother: a couple of blocks away from our hotel, there was some sort of special clothing sale going on, just bins of clothes in rented office space. One of the mannequins in the window was wearing a cute t-shirt with a cat on it, which I immediately wanted. We went in, and Max held my bag while I dug through the bins until I was nearly ready to give up and just ask for the t-shirt in the window, because I couldn't find the same one. I decided to have one last go, and Max joined in. Guess what he found? The t-shirt I wanted! Thanks, Max!
The morning of our third day in the Kansai area, we had a bit of time before catching the train to Nara. After another round of breakfast viking, we went off in search of Den-den Town, which is Osaka's answer to Tokyo's Akihabara: a shopping district with a high concentration of electronics, video gaming and anime goods, and related items. We got off at what we thought was the nearest station, but got a bit lost. At last we found it, but as it was still relatively early, there weren't many people around, so it felt kind of dead.
There was an ice cream vendor setting up at a street corner, but he was all out of wasabi ice cream, so I got something else instead, possibly yuzu (a kind of citrus) flavour.
We left Osaka but the grey skies stayed with us all the way to Nara, which is only about half an hour away. As soon as we were out in the open, it started to drizzle, and continued to do so for much of the rest of the day.
Nara is often done as a day trip from Kyoto, because the only real reason to go there is to see old temples and shrines, which is what people usually go to Kyoto to see. I would contend, however, that as beautiful as Kyoto is, one can only take in so many temples and shrines, and seeing Nara on top of that would be overload; the way Max and I did it, we got a big city (Osaka), a slice of history (Himeji), and some very old religious buildings and statues (Nara), which was a very well balanced three day trip.
Arriving in Nara, we got a tourist map, and joined the throngs of students on their way to the most famous sights. We were there on a regular Monday, so most of the visitors were school groups (mainly middle schools), though there was a good showing of foreign tourists as well.
Apart from its ancient buildings, Nara is famous for its deer. Tame deer roam the streets freely, growing fat off the food given to them by visitors. These creatures are not shy at all, and Max and I made sure that the snacks we'd brought with us were safely wrapped up and put deep in our bags, where their scent would not attract the deer, and decided against purchasing feed from one of the many vendors. We got a great kick out of watching a group of schoolgirls, who'd run out of snacks, get chased by a couple of deer, though.
Todai-ji is very impressive and made entirely of wood. It's home to the largest Buddha in Japan (Daibutsu), which is large indeed, as well as very old. The rain added to the atmosphere, and though the school kids were noisy, as you'd expect middle schoolers to be, the damp air muted everything just enough for their voices to become more a background noise to me.
One of the Japanese words that Max had learned during the trip was "sugoi" (or "sugee", in its more casual form), which means "awesome". We kept an informal count of how many times we heard a kid utter that about the great Buddha, and our total came up to a lot!
We weren't planning on spending more than a few hours in Nara, so we had lunch, then walked to a couple more places of interest, including Gango-ji, which is supposed to be the oldest building in Japan, I believe. It's very small and unpretentious, though I think it used to be part of a much larger complex of buildings, and inside it had some very old wooden statues. There were signs prohibiting photography, which is why I have no pictures, but I remember how hushed it was there, far from the main glut of visitors.
From Nara, we took a train to Kyoto rather than back to Osaka, and hopped on the shinkansen there. This was both because it made more sens, geographically, as Kyoto is east of Osaka, and because it was slightly cheaper for me, since I didn't have a rail pass and had to pay full price for the ticket. I'd been a bit afraid we might not get to sit down, since the route starts in Osaka and not Kyoto, but we found a pair of empty seats and settled in to enjoy the bento we'd bought at the train station.
