Nara

(Okay I know this is really really late! I was encountering...technical difficulties...and therefore am only now updating. But yes I am still alive and for now we'll pretend that I wrote this on 10/6...lol!)

After an 8 hour bus ride(!) Ani and I arrived in Nara at around 5am. Nara is in the Kanto region of Japan, near Kyoto. When Ani and I stepped off the bus, the place looked like a ghost town. There was barely anyone on the streets. So after a night of no sleep, Ani and I proceeded to attempt to figure out where we were going with a town map written completely in Japanese (no English tourist maps available). Luckily, the two of us were able to put our kanji (Chinese characters also used in Japanese) skills together and figure out the street we needed to go down to find the Nara Park, where most of the sites in Nara are located. We found an internet cafe and decided to actually plan out our day. After spending about half an hour in the cafe, we walked down the street to try to find some breakfast. Unfortunately the only thing open was McDonald's. Ironically the place we had really wanted to eat breakfast at opened just as we were finishing our meal.
After eating, we decided to find Nara Park. By this time the first crowds of people were rushing to work and school. We found Nara Park relatively easily and took in some of the sites. I had heard stories that in Nara, deer roam around and are generally unconcerned about human presence. This was confirmed when the first deer we saw let us get relatively close to them. Ani and I later laughed about how excited we were when we first saw deer when later in the day we actually pet deer!
While we took a rest (because we were walking around with our backpacks on) in a relatively peaceful area of the park, we were soon invaded by an elementary school field trip. They literally took over the park! We joked about how the deer park was actually a "dear park" and the children were the "dears".
After taking a break, we went to Todaiji Temple. This temple houses a 15 meter tall statue of Buddha. It's huge! After seeing this temple we ate lunch at a katsu restaurant (katsu is meat cooked in some kind of bread. It kind of looks like fried chicken except not as greasy). After lunch we walked around the shops and then headed toward the station to travel to Osaka where we would be staying the night...

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