More apologies for another late post but I just got back from a two week long vacation. For your patience though I'll try and make it up with a two-fer this weekend. But before I get ahead of myself, let's get to Nara.
Traveling to Nara gave me my first opportunity to ride the Shinkansen,
the bullet train. The inside of the train is set up very much like an
airplane with aisle and seat numbers and tray tables and such.
From Nagoya station, we hopped a forty minute Shinkansen ride to Kyoto and from Kyoto was an hour long densha ride to Nara. We made the mistake of taking the local train, but if we had taken a rapid we probably would have made up about fifteen minutes of that ride.
The ancient city of Nara is in Nara Prefecture. Nara was the capital of Japan for a very short while from 710 to 784. One of the coolest things in the city is the presence of deer...just everywhere. Derived from an old myth, the deer are thought to be sacred animals who protect the city. The roam freely mostly around Nara Park but also in the adjacent streets and temples.
Street vendors sells 'deer cookies' little packages of round wafers of healthy goodness for the deer that tourists will buy to get up close and personal with the deer. They seem rather tame but I've heard many a story about biting deer on trips to Nara, presumably when the tourists had run out of cookies before the deer were quite done eating.
One of the focal points of the city is the Daibutsu (Great Buddha) at Toda-ji Temple. It is the world's largest bronze statue. These pictures really don't accurately how how big the statue actually is. It's just, ginormous...
 |
| View of Toda-ji Temple |
There was a hill overlooking the city that we were able to climb up. They had built a winding wooden staircase that lead about halfway up the mountain.
 |
| View from the top |
And a selection of other pictures of this beautiful city.
Stay tuned for another update this weekend. Cheers.
