Nara Day Trip

We got a slightly later start than I would have liked, but we were out of our Higashiyama Airbnb by 10:00 and on to Nara. Once the train reached Nara, we had a long walk ahead of us - first from the station we arrived in to the station we'd be departing from, with our bags. We left them in a locker and walked on - through the brutal heat - to Nara Park. 

 This may be a good place to note - people online get a little crazy when describing Japan in the summer. I'd looked at the temperature and humidity and had figured it would be on par with an east coast summer, comparable to New York or Washington DC. And it was, with maybe slightly higher humidity. Still... during the height of summer, there's a difference between sitting in your air-conditioned home and hiking from one monument to another on the National Mall. Which is the equivalent of what we were doing, now.

 

But then, we came across our first tame deer.

The first group was just chilling on a sidewalk, right by the busy road. Growing up in rural Virginia, in an area that suffers from deer overpopulation, deer are not a novelty to me. But I'd never touched a (live) one before, as the group of tourists swarming around them were doing. The deer, to their credit, seemed pretty chill about it. The whole area smelled like a dairy farm, interestingly enough.

 

Reaching the temple grounds, we stopped by the Todai-ji museum to cool off and get postcards. Nara is one of the places I really wished we'd had more time - aside from the blessed air conditioning, the museums around town looked really interesting. Nara was one of Japan's earliest capitals - there's even a "Nara Period" named after it, starting in 710 CE. A giant hand, as tall as a person, by the front of the museum gave us a hint for what was up next.

We continued on toward Todai-ji. In several places, we read that the temple is the largest wooden structure in the world. It was spectacular in size, as was the ancient bronze Buddha it enshrines - the hand by the museum was a scale copy of the statue's hand.

Monica and I both got shuin, then headed back down the street leading to the temple to look at souvenirs. I bought a another (deer-themed) Hello Kitty key chain and a magnet. We also got crackers - senbei - to feed the deer. I don't know how healthy a diet of senbei is, but the deer didn't seem picky; we saw one try to eat a paper map and another bit me on the butt. For Monica's senbei, we remember to bow. The deer did indeed nod back!

 

We looked at a few more shops and visited the tourist info center for a stamp for Monica's collection. As the sky grew cloudier, I grew concerned about the time. I managed to to pull up a timetable on my phone and saw no more direct trains headed to Koya-san that day. While I'd love to return to Nara, at that moment, we needed to head on to our next location.