Nara revisited

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Kyoto and Nara are 2 of Japan's ancient capitals both located in the Kansai region. And like sisters, one is more popular and considered prettier than the other. The prettier one to most people would be Kyoto, which most of the time, top the must see places in a travelers list. While Nara may always be on the places to go to list, it will never beat Kyoto on the top spot and sometimes travelers will only consider going there, if they still have spare time.

Kyoto for me is a very beautiful place, but Nara too has its charm that one can never see in Kyoto. I for one tend to ignore this Nara charm, when I visited it 3 years ago with a friend of mine from the States. It was spring then, so we were dressed in shirt and shorts. Osaka was warm and was surprised to arrived in the snowing city of Nara. We took a picture of the Todaiji temple and hang out with the deers, that roam around freely in the Nara Park. Then decided we have seen enough and it was too cold anyway to stay longer, so headed home only after spending a good 30 minutes in the park.

Now I realized we made a wrong decision not giving enough time to explore this place during my first visit. Yesterday I made another trip to Nara with Mei, my friend from the Philippines. We also brought my 2 kiddies who both had a really great time.

Arriving at the newly renovated JR station, I felt that a revitalized tourism campaign was in place for the city. The new station was huge, they even had pillars that feels like the ones from the temples. It even has a new bus station to open sometime soon. When I went to Nara before the tourism office was an old lady who sells you a bus pass, gives you a map and points you the bus stop. Now they have 2 tourism office on both floors, with desk officers that speak fluent English, and even hand outs Japanese origami spinning tops for your kiddies. The bus too are very tourists friendly, with TV screen that tells you where to get off and what to see on those stops. It was a breeze navigating through Nara park, even people manning the stations spoke very good English.

Our first stop was Todaiji or the eastern temple, where you could find Daibutsuden, one of the word's biggest wooden structure. In it you could find Daibutsu or the great Budha. The wooden structure was massive, beautiful and looks very old, which is really great. Because in Japan some reconstruction often involved using new materials to repair damaged or worn out spots, but still retained the structure's original form.

Nara Park is famous for its deers, and by deers, I mean loads of it, roaming around freely all throughout the park. Akira enjoyed playing with the deers so much. So he was well behaved as we checked out the sites with a promise that he gets to play again with them after each site visit. And Hannah was so behaved too, for she was frightened by the deers. One time she was sitting in her stroller, when a deer came to her sniffing her bag for food. She screamed everytime a deer came too close to her, although enjoyed viewing them from a distance. My son, Akira had a funny way of testing if the deer is friendly. He touches the rear end first, if the deer remained calm, then he makes his way up to its head. One can buy deer food for 150 yen and experienced being surrounded by deers poking you from all sides. It was fun having to watch my friend Mei, getting sort of being attacked by these biscuits loving deers.

We then walked our way to the Nara museum, where we used the toilet. It was a neat museum, maybe next time we can explore it without the kiddies. We then visited the Kokufuji temple then made our way home.

It was great being at Nara. Adults can enjoy the sites and the history it provides, while both adults and kiddies can enjoy playing with the deers around the park.

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