Our Japanese Journey

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Day 1 - Nara

We slept well last night after arriving at our motel just after 8pm. It's a very basic room but clean and considering the budget price we're getting it for, quite satisfactory.

Today we decided to brave the subway/train system. We were going to head back to Tennoji because we were going to get Kansai Train Passes there but we couldn't find how to get there from our subway station so we decided to head out to Nara instead. It was a very hot, humid day as we walked up the hill towards the deer park and it wasn't long before we got our first close encounter with a deer - or 4. Caitlyn bought these biscuit looking things that a street vendor was selling as deer food and as soon as she started feeding one, several others turned up.

Without really knowing where we were going, we wandered through the park towards the 3 and 5 storey pagoda's. That's where we ran into Keiko. Keiko is a university student who wants to improve her spoken English so she volunteers with the local visitors information office to act as an English speaking guide. She told us about how the 3 storey pagoda represents past, present and future and the 5 storey pagoda represents earth, fire, water, wind, air (not sure if I've got the sequence right though). She also explained to us why the red aprons were tied to the stone monuments at the shinto shrine - to ward off the evil spirits. The water features at shinto shrines are there for visitors to wash/purify their hands and to sprinkle around the monuments to put out the fires of hell (!) It certainly made it a lot more interesting to have someone explain the symbolism to us.

Next we visited Todaiji Temple which houses the 2nd largest Buddha in the world - he's seriously supersized, around 2 or 3 stories tall. On top of the temple are 2 fish tails - the belief is that the fish, which are water creatures, will keep the wooden building from burning down. However, they must have been napping because sometime in the 8th century AD, about 100 years or so after the first temple was built, it was burnt down and the existing building was built but due to a lack of timber in Japan, it is only 2/3rds the size of the original. Still pretty impressive though. After you take your shoes off, you walk into the temple and pass a huge shinagami (a supernatural being/god, who takes notes about your deeds and then judges you when you pass on). The giant shinagami stands about 4 metres high and is carved from wood - really beautiful artwork, even if he looks like he has his cranky pants on.

From there, we headed up to a building where they have installed a seismic dampening system. You can view the system, which was fitted to the building retrospectively (i.e. after it was built), through a glass panel down in the basement of the building which is accessed down some stairs from street level. The dampening system helps to combat the lateral/sideways movement that tall buildings experience in earthquakes.

We had a look at some more temples and then moved on to a little restaurant where we had a very nice udon dish before returning back to Osaka.

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Photos

Todaji temple, Nara
Houses the 2nd largest Buddha statue.

Wooden carving, Todaji Temple
Although it's difficult to see, the amount of detail in this wooden carving of a shinigami is amazing