Nara

The day following the Nagoya trip, we went on our third and last day trip for the long weekend - Nara. Nara, after Kyoto is THE place if you want to experience some Japanese culture they say. Nara has tons of ancient temples and shrines for people to look at. I had been wanting to go there for ages, but didn't think I would manage to so soon!

The train journey from Ise to Nara took about three hours and therefore turned out to be a bit longer than expected. We took a relatively slow train and the ride was very exciting for me. We passed through a lot of countryside and the first thing I noticed was that it looked so - Japanese. The little onigiri-shaped hills, the terraced rice fields, the shrine gates at the entrance to forests, the pointed, tiled roofs, the paper-thin walls, everything looked like out of a travel guide. And then I realized that this is what Japan must look like for everyone living in Honshu all the time. It just felt exotic to me, because I live in Hokkaido. Honshu looks like Japan, Hokkaido looks like Hokkaido.
This realisation filled me up with both regret and gratitude at the same time. Regret, because I kind of felt sorry for a moment not having ended up in the "real" ancient Japan of the history books, gratitude because this allows me to take a fresh look at everything I encounter when travelling to the "mainland". The regret part was also soon forgotten, because Hokkaido is (not only literally) a pretty cool place to live.

It was a rainy day, but a Saturday nonetheless, so Nara was swarming with tourists. At midday the little streets and arcades leading up to Nara's main sights were packed with people looking for suitable places to have lunch. We found ours in a sushi place and then headed directly for Nara Park. Nara Park is a huge stretch of green which takes up a good half of the city. Almost all of Nara's famous temples and museum are located within Nara park. On top of that, Nara Park is not only populated by tourists from all over the world, but also by hundreds of "sacred deer" who live off specially purchasable snacks these tourists feed them.
They walk up to you in search for food and you can pet them or feed them. Apparently though, encounters with the deer do not always turn out that peacefully, which is why there are hilarious warning signs positioned all over Nara Park.
Unfortunately my camera's battery had died the day before and I only had my phone left to take pictures with. They turned out okay for the most part, but don't really do the scenery justice.

Nara park is full of Buddhist temples, on which you can read up anywhere on the internet, because I can't be bothered to copy and paste the info in here. Nara National museum for the large part is dedicated to Buddhist art as well. Unfortunately we didn't have time to go in, but we did see many of the temples. Many of them stand for Japan so iconically, I didn't even know they were located in Nara. A lot of stuff you will see on postcards or on the internet can in fact be seen in Nara park, such as the Five Story Pagoda and the Golden Hall.

The number one attraction in Nara Park though is Todaiji temple. It is the largest wooden structure in the world and home to Japan's largest Buddha stature (Daibutsu).

The healing statue

The sight of Todaiji really made me hold my breath for a moment. I've never seen anything comparable before in my life.
Next to entrance is an old Buddha statue that looks like some kind of zombie deity, but is actually famous for its healing qualities. If you touch its leg for example, and then your own leg, it will be cured (if there has been something wrong with it that is). My hip had been hurting of late; it does that whenever I walk around a lot, I guess I'm getting old.... Anyway, I tried to locate the Buddha's hip, then touched my own -  and nothing much happened. I guess he's just busy curing all these people, there is a long queue. The pain in my hip went away two days later actually, so maybe my turn had come ;)
After burning some incense we went into the temple to look at the famous Big Buddha of Nara, a sight which made me hold my breath a second time within ten minutes. The statue is so huge, a human can sit comfortably inside its nose.

Daibutsu, Todaiji

The picture of the statue was the last one I could take, because  shortly after my phone gave up the ghost as well. It wouldn't have done the atmosphere justice anyway, I suppose.

After the visit to Todaiji, we spent the time till nightfall wandering around some more around Nara Park. Again I was surprised that you could have such a quiet forest area right in the middle of a town. We walked up to Kasuga Jingu, which is famous for it's stone lanterns, some of them several hundred years old. I have never seen so many stone lanterns in one spot. Kasuga Jingu again is a shrine complex including several shrines all suiting different purposes. There were shrines that you should pray at if you are a certain "unlucky" age, shrines whose kami can heal very specific illnesses and even a famous shrine dedicated to things to do with love and marriage. You could buy little pink ema (votive tablets) and write your wish for your love life on them. People put the tablets up by the shrine to make their wishes come true. The tablets are public so everyone can read them and sometimes what is written on them can be heart-warming, sometimes pretty depressing. People even put their names, and in some cases their addresses on the tablets.

The last place we discovered inside Nara park was a little pavilion in the middle of a lake. I think I'd seen pictures of it somewhere before. The sun was just going down and since it was pouring with rain, only a few people were there. It was a very peaceful end to the day. One day I'd definitely like to come back and see the rest.