Nara aka: 奈良

The little nibblers come to eat your fingers. Luckily, somebody has sawed off all their horns, or they’d be fairly bothersome. The large wooden Buddha is also impressive.

So close to Kyoto and so much to do, it’s a great place to go. Even if you don’t like temples, the whole atmosphere of the place is great. Watch out for the deer… I was one of them attack a small child, but then that’s what you get for having them in such close proximity to people with millions of people a day stuffing shikasenbei in their faces.

I guess it’s because I went during Golden Week (a week when most of the Japanese are on vacation) so it was massively crowded, but my experience in Nara wasn’t that great…

I felt really bad for the deer-they seemed so miserable! They’re always surrounded by people and forced to eat the little biscuits-even when though they’ve had enough. I was really looking forward to petting and feeding the deer myself, but when I saw the number of people forcing the food into their mouth, I just couldn’t bear to do it.
I remember seeing this one couple who tried to feed a deer, but since it wouldn’t eat it, they stuck the biscuit into its hooves (to make it seem like it’s holding it) and took a picture on their cellphones, all the while the deer is just sitting there, looking sad. :/

Todaiji was awesome, though.

The temple is very nice; lots of interesting stuff inside and the outside is beautiful.

But watch out for the deer; they can be malicious if you have rice crackers or any other sort of food.

We visited Nara as a day trip from Kyoto. Shortly after leaving the station, we walked through the small central business district, and came to Nara’s park. We saw the famous five story pagoda, and herds of the tame deer that roam the park. We then went to the where the daibutsu is housed. This temple is still the largest wooden building in the world, even though the latest version of it from the 1700s is 2/3s the size of the original, which burned down.

After lunch, we then went to Shinyakushiji, which was built in the mid 700s. All but one of the original statues guarding the image of the buddha are still there. The building was in some disrepair when I visited 20+ years ago, and gloomily lit, such that it really felt like it was ancient but decrepit. They have since spruced the place up considerably, and I think it is much nicer. They had a photo of a model of one of the statues painted as it would have appeared 1200+ years ago – I am reminded that I have read that those classic white marble greek statues were also apparently originally brightly painted.

From there we walked back in the sticky heat back to the Nara train station and back to Kyoto.