Blogs from Nara, Japan, Asia - page 5

Introduction Quite often, first time visitors to Japan are directed towards Kyoto as it does have the more famous sights. I can only blame myself, but I also fell victim to this and visited Kyoto three times and I enjoyed the sights a lot and continued to put Nara off as a second rate Kyoto and never went there as more important sights were left to explore elsewhere. When I finally made it to Nara, it was like a revelation: Instead of rushing from one side of a typical urban Japanese town to the other to catch the sights like in Kyoto, everything was located in or around Nara Park and the sights in Nara are first class, no matter what people might tell you. We were lucky, as it was a gloomy November day, the ... read more

Spent my last few days of japan in the mountain in the middle of nowhere! Took us about 6hrs to get down there but so worth it to get out the cities and thought we might actually be able to get somewhere without getting lost.. no, not quite! But there were rivers, mountains, waterfalls and onsens round every corner. We were staying with an American who was living in this village and teaching English in a lot of the schools. His pad was on the school grounds which was pretty cool because we got our fill of kids we’d been missing! All we had to do was leave the front door and have them all waving and shouting anything they knew in English at us! And the ‘couch’ this time was wiked.. big futon, duvet, pillows! ... read more

Nara is famous for having seven great temples. Today, my friend (who finally had a day off) and I decided to hit up Nara’s temples and check out the deer (鹿(しか)) (shika). In Nara, the deer are revered and considered sacred, so they meander across streets, through parks, and around the temples. It’s considered a criminal offense to molest a deer, or feed it anything other than せんべ (senbe – rice cakes). There were vendors selling senbe at various sections of the great temples, so I bought a couple of stacks to feed the deer. It was fun, if not a bit unnerving to be surrounded by hungry deer nibbling at your hands and clothing. I managed to feed the deer with nothing more than a sharp headbutt to my hind thigh, and then we made ... read more

We did an afternoon 1/2 Day tour of Nara near Kyoto and we went to Todaiji Temple (the largest wooden structure in the world housing the Japan's largest bronze Buddha), Nara Park (with the deer) and Kasuga Taisha shinto shrine, with lots of stone lanterns.... read more

Nara is the ancient capital of Japan. It is filled with temples, traditional handicrafts, and roe deer (who are believed to be a messenger of god). We awoke around 730am and indulged in a nice cheap and spectacular ‘bread and cheese’ breakfast (note the sarcasm). It is a simple day trip from Osaka, just a 40min subway/train ride to Nara. When we arrived, we sat down for a much needed coffee and overlooked the very slim amount of information we had received from the tourism office. Our first destination was Tofukuji. It is temple with a huge 5 story pagoda. Unfortunately there was a lot of construction going on, so the overall mood of the place wasn’t what we were expecting. We did however manage our first run in, with what would come to be hundreds, ... read more