Nara, Temples and Deer

With Soph finally back in Japan and having finally moved into our new apartment (more on this later maybe?) we decided it was high time we got out there and did the tourist thing again. So when our friends in Nara invited us out for dinner at their place we decide to make a day of it and go see Todaiji Temple and Nara Park as well.

Nara is a lot greener than both the cities of Kyoto and Osaka, with a large open parkland connecting the various temples and museums its famous for. This leads many of my students, particulary the ones from Osaka, to declare Nara to be "the country". Which is a bit like calling your backyard "the country" because it has more trees than the car-park across the road.

Never the less Nara was really impressive. There were two big items on our sightseeing list. One was Todaiji Temple, a massive wooden temple that houses one of the largest bronze buddha statues in the world. At my guess I'd say it was about three or four stories tall with a huge gold-leaf covered background behind it (I always feel odd taking photos inside temples, even when its obvious you can, so I didn't take any of the massive buddha. But Soph did, so maybe she'll upload some photos later)


Todaiji Temple
The other thing Nara is famous for is its deer which roam freely throught Nara Park and can be found pretty much everywhere you go. Though they're most numerous wherever there are vendors selling shika-senbei (deer biscuits). As far as we could tell the way it works is you buy the deer biscuits, then stand there as the deer proceed to mob you until you have no more biscuits left at which point they lose interest and move onto their next victim. Not bad value for 150yen we thought.


Left: Sophie being mobbed by deer. Right: Clinton not being mobbed by deer.
We spent the rest of our time there wandering around the various other temples and parkland that connects them until we had to go. There was probably quite a bit we didn't get to see, so I'm looking forward to going back there again sometime.


This is us with a tile we donated to help with the restoration of the Todaiji Temple roof, they allow you to write your names and "a message for world peace" on them so it has our names written in Katakana down each side and the Kanji for harmony in the centre.