Nara - June 5

Today (June 5) we traveled to Nara for the day. Nara, about 40 minutes south of Kyoto by train, was the original seat of imperial power in Japan. The first imperial court was established here from 710 to 794 (c.e.) by Prince Shotoku. In 794, the Imperial court was removed to Kyoto to distance it from the increasingly-influential Buddhist priesthood of Nara, but Nara remained an important place for Buddhism in Japan.

We arrived by train from Kyoto around 11:00. By the time we had visited the travel information office, found our bearings, and decided on an appropriate layering of Gore-Tex (it was raining), we were getting hungry and ducked into a noodle shop for lunch.



The first stop along our walking tour of Nara was Kofuku-ji Temple, famous for it's 5-storey 50.1m-tall pagoda. We continued into Nara Park, an expanse of forest, open space, temples, and museums filled with over 1,000 very audacious deer. We were pretty much dodging deer as we walked. Kiosks sell “deer biscuits” – low-grade bread rounds – which people then feed to the deer (though “bait” and “taunt” may be more fitting descriptions of the behavior of deer biscuit-wielding schoolchildren).

We crossed the grounds of the Nara national museum, though we did not stop in to see the artifacts. Turing the corner, we entered the long causeway leading to Todai-ji Temple's Great Buddha Hall, a wooden structure of truly shocking scale containing a bronze Buddha (“Daibutsu”, locally) of equally shocking scale. On our way out of the Great Buddha hall, we were accosted (ok, more of a gentle accosting) by a horde of schoolchildren who wanted to practice their English and take a picture with funny weird American people.



We wandered the park for a couple more hours, seeing various shrines, beautiful groves, manicured gardens, and plenty of deer. The entry courtyard to one shrine featured an 800 year-old wisteria. To be honest, at first I thought it was just vines for shade, because the many trunks of the tree were held aloft by a bamboo lattice. We tried a green tea soft serve ice cream, and the fact that we were the only adults in the entire park eating ice cream cones made it no less delicious!



All told, it was a nice slow day in the rain, and Nara was a wonderful place to visit. As I am sure will be a theme over the next few months, today was a powerful inspiration to delve into the fascinating history of this place. We returned to Kyoto, and decided we needed a meal with less fish and more veggies than recent fare, so we sautéed some vegetables in the kitchenette alongside some curried noodles and ate on the patio.