Day Eleven: Nara

I woke up at 8:00 PM and after half an hour of stumbling around and getting changed, I finally left the hostel. As I walked past the Station to the Ryokan, I met Riddhi who said he was off to Hiroshima for a couple of days, to meet a friend of his. Surprised, I wished him well in his endeavour and headed off to the hostel, wondering whether I'd see him alive again.

I met Simon and Kunal at the Ryokan and we headed off for breakfast. Simon and Kunal both said they had been surprised by Riddhi's decision: there seemed to be no known motive behind his decision.

After breakfast we caught the “Rapid” train (not a shinkansen) to Nara, the ancient and venerable capital of Japan: the birthplace of Japanese culture and national identity. There's very little of the countryside to be seen from the train to Nara, just urban area after urban area, all merging into one giant sprawl. This surprised me, in some respects, as I had often read about the Japanese's respect for nature and so I assumed the countryside would remain relatively untouched by human hands. I was wrong, Japan's large population and lack of arable land has meant that every bit of fertile Japanese land has been exploited. The feeling of unease that I felt when I first arrived in Kyoto grew worse.

Apart from this, the 45 minute journey to Nara was fairly dull, I spent most of it reading my guide book whilst Simon and Kunal slept. Nara was a shock to the system. My vision of Nara was similar to my original vision of Kyoto: I thought of all places, the first true capital of Japan would be filled with ancient temples and pagodas. Instead I found apartment blocks and more tarmac.

It turns out that most of Nara's temples lie around Nara-koen (Nara park), in the west of the town, not far from the station. On the way to Nara-koen, we had lunch at a busy café. I had kamiza udon (tofu slices with udon noodles and stock) whilst Kunal had pork udon and Simon had a hot pot (Nabe), which proved impossible to finish.

After lunch, we entered Nara-koen. We saw the five-story pagoda and herds of deer of Kofuku-ji, the world's large bronze buddha at Todai-ji (which is housed in the world's largest wooden hall) and the infamous lanterns of Kasuga Taisha ( an important Shinto shrine founded by the Fuijiwara family, who have close ties to the Imperial family).

Nara-koen provided a fairly tranquil setting for sight-seeing, although I felt uneasy about the large number of tourists in the park. I couldn't imagine how crowded Nara-koen must get in the spring or autumn (the main tourist seasons).

The rest of the day, after Nara-koen, was less eventful. We returned to Kyoto on the “Local” train which took about 80 minutes. After dinner, I returned to the hostel and spent quite a bit of time making Skype calls and updating the blog. Eventually, I crawled into bed and fell into a dreamless sleep.

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Part of trip: Japan

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