Nara

Our Japan Rail pass expired 3 days after arriving in Kyoto, so we decided to do some day trips from Kyoto before it expired. Our first was to Nara and then Uji for the Byodo-in temple and garden on the way back.

Nara is a quaint ‘little’ city south of Kyoto and has a massive park just east of it. Nara is second only to Kyoto when it comes to cultural history in Japan, with tons of temples and shrines (as it was the first permanent capitol of Japan in 710!). The park is filled with them and we spent most of the day walking around without too much of an agenda.

We started out near some impressive pagodas and stupas. This one is the second tallest in Japan!

Just behind the first set of buildings is the start of the park, home to the Nara deer. They’ve basically been domesticated through generations of human feedings, so they’re everywhere! Some even bow in order to earn their cookie. We did not partake in the feeding frenzy, but it was interesting to watch!

The deer tried to wait in line and cut out the middle-human, but it didn’t work.

One defining piece of Japanese architecture, for me, is the ‘heavy’ roof line. The roofs are incredibly ornate and thick, with big sweeping overhangs (presumably to handle all the heavy rain). We were amazing at the detail that goes into all of these structures.

One of the largest wooden buildings in the world is in Nara. It houses a 50 foot tall sitting Buddha. One of the wooden support posts has a hole the same size as the Buddha’s nostril. If you can fit through it, you’re well on your way to enlightenment. Many try, some succeed.

Behind the park, we climbed up a hill to overlook the city.

There were tons of school groups in Nara on field trips. It became clear that one of their assignments was to practice their English with tourists. This group of students very politely stopped us with their notebooks and read off a series of questions in English to us and then had us sign their notebook. Then gave us this paper crane they made as a thank you!

On our way back to the train station we stopped at this mochi stop to watch them pound out this dough and to sample the freshly made mochi…of course..yum!

From Nara, we took the train to Uji. We were glad we made it a stop on our way back to Kyoto instead of making a separate trip just for it. The Phoenix Hall Temple was quite impressive to see and is featured on Japanese money. Unfortunately, we couldn’t go inside, but the recreations of the inside in the attached museum sure made us wish we could!

Uji is known for its matcha, every shop was selling it or various sweets made with it. So Priscilla got some ice cream. It had sugar, so that was good. However, I’m not a huge matcha fan so we didn’t linger too long.

Highlights of Nara:

• All the structures and temples around Nara Park
• Watching people scream when trying to feed the Nara deer
• Leaving the main thoroughfare in Nara Park and it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves

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