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Published: November 29th 2012
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Day 10
When we awoke, we were greeted by the sight of rain, buckets of it. The sky was extremely grey, and there didn't look to be any breaks in the cloud. During breakfast, we tried to look for any likely candidates that might be joining our tour, and managed to spot a couple of candidates. When we made our way to the lobby with our luggage, our predictions we correct, and we had gained 2 new couples. Our new guide Kim greeted us, and informed us that we would be picking up one more person at another hotel in Osaka city, before heading our to our first stop.
The traffic was awful, partly because of the rain, also it was Monday, and there had been a Labour Day holiday on the Friday, so lots of people were heading back to work. We crawled along, and the rain seemed to get worse not better, and eventually we collected our extra guest, and started towards Osaka Castle. The coach stopped in the parking area, and it was a good walk to the actual castle. The coach had a stock of umbrellas, which was lucky as it was raining so hard,
small rivers were forming along the pavements. As we approached the castle, the rain slackened off - typical!
Once again, there is a good proportion of the castle that is actually a reconstruction, and actually very little of the main structure is original. The castle was first built in 1586, destroyed in 1615, rebuilt again and then struck by lightning and destroyed! Some of the foundation walls are original, and it is a very impressive building that they have recreated to the an impression of what it would have been like during the Shogun period. We would have got a good view from the observation deck on the top floor, had the weather been a little better, but the cloud was quite a long way down. The exhibits that were on display were the usual artifacts, but more inventive were the video clips - they reminded us of Monkey as the scenery was real, but the tv image was projected onto it.
We walked back to the coach, and on the way the heavens opened and everyone got soaked. It also made everyone quite cold, and steamed up the coach nicely as we continued on our journey. We
stopped for lunch at a small restaurant, and we were sat with one of the new couples from the trip. They were on their honeymoon, having got married in the Philippines and he shared dual citizanship with the USA and she was had been living in the Philippines so they had been travelling to meet for the last 5 years. Outside, the driver had brought the coach as close as he could to the door to stop us getting wet when we came out. They had "different" downspouts from the gutters - tulips on top of each other cascading the water.
The next stop was Nara, which is famous for it's Deer Park, although with the weather we weren't sure how evident the deer would be. During the journey, the rain stopped, but almost as soon as we arrived, it started again! The deer were a bit more agressive here, sniffing at tourists as they sell biscuits to feed the deer. It was a real shame about the weather, as we hurried through past the deer towards the temple we had come to see.
The Todai-ji Temple was completed by the Emperor in 752, to house Nara's Great
Buddha, cement political power and as a place away from the diseases of the surrounding areas. The immense wooden hall is the largest wooden building in the world, and part of the statue within are actually original - the body. At 16m in height, it is Japan's largest bronze statue, and sitting on a lotus with his palm upturned, it was quite a sight, considering he has survived an earthquake, and two fires! On either side of the statue are two guardian gods at each over 7m tall. At the rear of the hall, were two reconstructions of the temple how they would have looked in previous times, and as we rounded the back of the statue, we were greeted witht the sight of people squeezing through a hole in a pillar - this represents one of Buddha's nostrils and if you can fit through it is condidered very auspicious.
We rushed back to the coach - in the rain again - and true to form it stopped as we were leaving. Our final stop of the day, on our way to Kyoto, was to a green tea ceremony. This was in the small area called Uji City, at
a Government run attraction. We just made it in time for the last ceremony of the day. We removed our shoes on the way into the tea house, and sat round the best we could in a circle round the Sensi. Each of us was firstly given a sweet cake to eat, as the tea here is quite bitter. It looked a bit like a marzipan roll to be eaten with a sharpened stick, and tasted worse, and so Kathryn left most of it to the horror of the hosts! Then we were all given a tea cup/bowl and the ceremony began, and the end product loked like frothy pea soup, it was that vivid colour. The last mouthful should be slurped, which the group managed with great success.
We then made our way to the hotel at Kyoto, and just next to the hotel was a huge temple. Upon checking the itinery, we werent actually visiting this site, but then there are a large number of UNESCO sights in the city and we didnt have time to see them all. The hotel had an entrance on the 2nd floor, but the loby and reception was downstairs, this seems
to be the same with quite a few of the Japanese hotels. There was no WIFI at the hotel, and in room internet was expensive, so we were going to be without for a couple of days. There was a free shuttle bus leaving every 15minutes to the railway station, where the guide had told us there were quite a few places to eat. We arranged to meet one of the other couples from the group, and caught the little bus. We opted for Italian, as i think we were all "Japanesed out" and needed something different. After dinner we split up to look in the gift shop for treasures, with a view to catching the shuttle back. We were a little late getting to the shuttle bus, and it was already full. The next one wasn't for another half and hour, so we walked back which only took 20minutes.
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