Nara

Nara is half way between the mega cities of Kyoto and Osaka, however

on the train you would never know that they are separate places as they

seem to be joined in a never ending suburban sprawl. The train is definitely the way to travel in Japan, you see more, its very comfortable and efficient. Nara is also the birth place of Japan's culture and religion with some of the sites dating back to the 3rd century AD.

So our few days in Nara started much like any other at the moment:

• Leave hotel/ hostel
• Get train to next place
• Find tourist info, collect leaflets and find accommodation
• Walk the streets (lost for hours - not quite but feels like it when carrying 20K) trying to find the booked accommodation whilst walking past loads of places that would have been closer
• Check in and be told that there is no check in until 15:00
• Start exploring
• Return to hotel at 15:01 to check in, put the bags into the room and then out to explore some more!!

The visit to the tourist info centres are important not just for accommodation but also for the tourist map. These free leaflets really help with getting round the area but also identifying quickly whats worth doing.  Nara was no exception. This particular map had a suggested walking route to take in the main sites of this very old city, so off we went.

 

After a short walk through the town and the tourist shops selling funny looking sweets and fans (never understood why every country sells fans to tourists) we eventually ended up in this park with wild deer running around, startling the tourists and the general passers by.

 

The park/countryside was filled with temples, traditional Japanese house/halls and thousands of stone lanterns which are only lit twice a year (I wonder why?) We even managed with some planning to have a picnic on top of Wakakusa Hill overlooking Nara and the park (see falling over boy picture...it wasn't that windy he just fell over). The end of the trail ended in a visit to Todai-ji Daibutsu-den, the largest wooden structure in the world, boy they were not kidding. Inside the building was a 16m high bronze statue of Budda. Now in Japan we have seen some temples, we have seen some buildings both modern and ancient but this place took our breath away.  Its scale, its beauty and how the Japanese care for the place.  Even though this was not the last stop in Japan, it topped our sightseeing off nicely.

 

Also on the route we came across a Temple much like the others we had seen on this trip, selling fortunes. For a bit of fun we decided to see what our fortune held and Emma became attached to this particular one as it came accompanied by a little wooden Deer. So No-i (as he has now become known) is the 3rd member of the team and will be cropping up in photos from time to time. Its a good job we got a useless piece of wood for our Y500 as the fortune was headed up saying "Limited Good Fortune".

 

Next Osaka and the Boat to China.