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Published: September 27th 2013
The Daibutsu
Todaiji temple, NaraFriday’s day trip was Nara. During the 8th century, Nara was the capital of Japan and as such, there was some intense temple building happening at the time. Even after it was no longer the capital, Nara was still an important religious centre. Because of this, there are some great temples and shrines to see. And unlike Kyoto, most of them are right near each other within a large park.
The train trip took about 50 minutes. You can do it quicker if you take the private Kintetsu line, but my rail pass doesn’t cover that. The Kintetsu station is also closer to the temples, but it wasn’t a big deal. There were a lot more tourists (Japanese and westerners) because Nara is a premier attraction in Japan. Thankfully it wasn’t as hot as previous days because there was a lot of walking to do.
I walked up the road towards the temples, my first destination being the 5 story pagoda of Kofuku-Ji temple. There’s also a 3 story pagoda and various other buildings. The pagodas were the most impressive though. I decided to have a look in the National Treasure hall, and bought a
3 Story Pagoda
Kofuku-Ji temple, Nara combination ticket with the Eastern Golden Hall. The latter was not much, but it only added a couple of dollars to the ticket price so I can’t complain.
Inside the National Treasure hall though, was absolutely amazing. Quantitatively, it wasn’t that large. But the statues in there were spectacular – especially the thousand-arm bodhisattva. While not actually having a thousand arms, the statue had many - plus a few extra heads coming out the top of the main one. It was over 5 metres tall and I couldn’t help just standing and staring at it for a while. The more I looked, the more details I saw (I didn’t notice the extra heads for a while). Each arm carried something different, from arrows and other weapons, to buildings and other things. It totally blew me away. That’s not to say the other statues and items on display weren’t impressive. Some of them certainly were. Others less so, but I was happy to have forked over the cash just to see the big one.
As I left Kofuku-Ji, I encountered some of Nara’s most famous residents – the red deer. Apparently when one of the
5 story Pagoda
Kofuku-Ji temple shrines was built, they asked a god to come and he arrived riding a deer. Ever since, the deer have lived a protected, and revered, life within Nara. They are all over the place, and not restricted at all. You can buy “deer crackers” to feed them if you want, but that just seems to cause more trouble than it’s worth, in my opinion. I did manage to get some photos, and when I stopped to have an ice cream, one decided he wanted it too. He told me this by butting my bum with his (thankfully) cut off horns. I firmly told him no – partly because you’re not supposed to feed them anything besides the crackers, and partly because it was my bloody ice-cream!
Next stop was the Todaiji temple. To get there I had to walk through the Nandaimon Gate, which was quite big and had 2 massive wooden statues inside (I think they were wood). I then headed into the temple. The main attraction here is the Daibutsuden, which means “Hall of the Great Buddha”. It is named thus because inside is a large statue of Buddha (or Daibutsu). If I thought the
large bodhisattva at Kofuku-ji was big (and I did), then I was in for a surprise. Actually, I did know there was a really big Buddha statue here, but that still didn’t prepare me for what I saw. Standing, or rather sitting, at just under 15 metres high, the statue managed to blow me away for the second time in one day.
There was also a few other statues in the hall, none of them small. I read in the pamphlet from the tourist information that the hall itself is the largest wooden structure in the world. I just googled it though, and it turns out it was until 1998. Still, the important thing is that everything was bloody huge.
From there I continued walking around the park. To be honest, I am not sure of the name of every temple, shrine or hall that I visited because many of them weren’t signposted in English. But it was all very pleasant and I got lots of photos. There were also a lot of Japanese school children on excursions, many of whom were keen to say hello. Many of them also asked me where I
was from, and one young fellow told me to “Have a nice day”. For at least one group, it was part of their schoolwork for the day because one lad asked me to sign his worksheet.
My final stop was the Kasuga Taisha shrine, which was the shrine responsible for the deer. I’m not really sure why, but the shrine contains thousands of lanterns. They are pretty much the dominant feature of the shrine.
After looking around the shrine, and other smaller ones nearby, it was just after 3:30 so I decided to walk back to town and check out a shop that I had walked past on the way up from the station. It was a long walk, and disappointingly the shop didn’t contain anything of interest in the end. Some items were ridiculously expensive; others were the same cheap souvenirs being sold all over Nara. Never mind, at this point I was exhausted and more than ready to catch the train back to Kyoto.
Tomorrow was going to be the ninja town of Iga, but I think I will leave that until Sunday because I was talking to one
of the hotel staff about buying a Japanese sword while I’m in town and he told me of a good place near Nijo castle. However, it seems that Japanese weapon laws are very strict so it could be a hassle and one of the many internet pages I consulted suggests it can take at least 2 weeks to organise. If that’s the case, I need to get cracking ASAP. So I will go visit the shop in the morning, and then probably head over to Osaka to visit the castle there.
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Samantha
non-member comment
Hey!
I love this post! It\'s wonderful reading about the Buddha and Bodhisattva images which left you awed- I\'ve added Nara to my bucket list haha.