Took a day trip to Nara today. It was one of the original capitals of Japan way back when until 784, so lots of temples and cool buildings to see. Also, more sacred deer. These ones were much less mangy than the ones on Miyajima and much more entertaining, or rather, people interacting with them was entertaining. You could by a stack of "deer biscuits" to feed the sacred deer. Watching people freak out when they got swarmed by waist-high deer was hilarious. What were the expectations there? Honestly. Daniel and I declined to feed the deer.
We went to lots of different temples, but the coolest one was Todaiji. Very big, and contained a huge Buddha statue called The Great Buddha (appropriate, no?). Emperor Shomu was accused of hogging all the bronze and precious metals in Japan to build his Buddha and various other statues for this one temple. A little girl in line with us put it this way: "This place was built by a bad man," and yeah, lots of wars and using his religion to make people unhappy, in my opinion, makes him not so nice.
On a much happier note, we went to a sake brewery and guess what, y'all? I like sake! We had a tasting and got free sake cups and bought some bottles and everything was delicious and nothing hurt. The end.
I decided (possibly a sake-influenced decision) that I knew how to get us back to Kyoto and I could handle finding the right train and getting us to the platform. No problem. I did great. Except when I picked a local train instead of a rapid one and what was a 45 min ride that morning (because Daniel knew to pick a rapid one. Isn't he special?) became a 2 hour ride that night. We didn't get home until 10, y'all. After walking all day in the heat and being all sweaty and dusty, not getting back to a shower until 10 gets you some pretty interesting looks from other people.
Love,
Leah Murphy, sake-liking explorer
No comments:
Post a Comment