Oh deer - in Nara

We were off to a slow start this morning. We had such a big day yesterday, the motivation to move was low. We headed down to the station and bought some bakery items. We ate this on the train trip to Nara, which took 45 minutes from Kyoto on the JR line. It was another hot and humid day today - summer in Japan. I think it was hotter than yesterday. When we got to Nara I could not find the bicycle hire place so we began to walk. But it was hot and nobody really wanted to walk. But we kept going. We were headed towards Nara park and the Todai-ji temple.

We took it slow and steady. We stopped at a pond to watch the turtles for a while. At the top of the hill and entrance to the Park, Justin and Bec hopped in a rickshaw for the ride to the temple gate. I walked the rest of the way to the temple and met up with them. Todai-ji temple is in the grounds of Nara park. There is an enormous gate to pass through on the way, which is guarded by wooden images of Ninja guards. Inside the temple is the largest buddha image in Japan.

Back outside in the park we bought food to feed the deer in the park. The deer are quite tame and are not interested in you unless you have food and then they wont leave you alone until it is gone. We had fun watching the people and the deer interact.

We were very tired and hot from the weather and did not spend very much time in Nara. Back at the station we headed back to Kyoto and snoozed on the way.

Back in Kyoto we went to the restaurant that Hideaki recommended yesterday. We had some great yakitori (meat on a stick) and drinks and felt refreshed again. The little restaurant had low tables and we had to take our shoes off to sit down. There was whale tongue on the menu - but we gave that one a big miss. We then headed to a coffee shop for dessert and more drinks. It was a fine afternoon.

Next we headed back to our ryokan and changed our shoes. We headed to a book store so Justin could buy an english book (he read the first one) and Bec could buy some Japanese books to read. She got High school musical and some childrens books, as well as some books to help her write her Kanji characters. We did some more shopping and then had KFC for dinner. Seems that we had Japanese for lunch so I was outvoted tonight. I love the japanese food I have tasted so far.

Tonight we must pack up our ever growing mountain of stuff and get ready to head to Osaka tomorrow. The journey is coming to an end.

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Part of trip: Bec's Japanese Journey

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