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Published: March 17th 2008
Japanese Crane
carefully looking for it's lunchThe next leg of our trip was to Nara, where Buddhism first came to Japan. This small city SW of Kyoto was the capital when Buddhist missionaries brought Buddhism to Japan and it has lots and lots of fine temples.
We stayed in a Ryokan (not a Rokugan as I kept calling them), which is a traditional Japanese inn with tatami floors and futons for beds. There was rather more luxury here as we got three futons rather than the one supplied at the previous place, and this was much more comfortable. The two main attractions of the ryokan are the huge communal bath and the amazing breakfasts. For the bath one has a wash in the shower before getting in and then one can wallow in a huge wonderfully hot bath about 8ft by 5ft by about 4ft deep. Normally men and women go separately but married couples can share so Amicu and I got to Share. The experience of floating up to your neck in toasty warm water was absolute bliss, especially after a hard day's touristing through January rain. The breakfast was also very interesting, a kind of green tea made from ground tea powder, fish, pickles,
a kind of porridge of a flavour I am totally unable to describe kept warm with a little paraffin heater, some slivers of fish and miso soup. All this is brought to you absolutely stunningly displayed and placed on a small table while you sit on the floor. As we where the only guests having breakfast that day we sat in our Yakata (Japanese dressing gown) in the middle of a very large tatami dining room which was otherwise completely empty. I felt I should be reciting haiku while folding paper crane it was so Japanese.
In Nara there were some really beautiful Buddhist statues from various temples including what was probably the cutest lion i have ever seen and some very early statues that looked like they came from Ancient Egypt. The biggest attraction in Nara is the Todai-Ji the worlds largest wooden building housing a 15m high bronze Buddha. My favourite part of the temple was the special windows cut in the temple at the Buddha’s eye height so he can see out. Nara also had a good quantity of wildlife including a staggering quantity of amazingly tame deer. The herd are believed to be messengers of
Cold Hidakai
did i mention it was cold and wet in Nara Kasugajinja a Shinto god and they are staggeringly tame, they will come and drag anything edible looking from any visitor foolish enough to leave it within their reach. One of them stole an empty battery packet from me and despite my best efforts to pull it back out of it's mouth proceeded to eat it. I hope there was no lasting damage done.
One thing that strikes you about Japanese religion is the way Buddism and Shintoism coexist together so well, each crossing and fertilising the other. I don't know if this has always been the case in Japanese history but i wish western religions would learn something from it.
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