Day Trip to Nara
I
don't believe I had ever heard of Nara
(or Himeji, or
Matsue, or Hagi, or Shizuoka, or
Nikko for that matter) before I started planning this trip to
Japan. Nara was the capital a very long time ago, before Kyoto, and is famous
today for its temples and tame deer. It makes an excellent day trip from Kyoto
by train, no reservations necessary (or even possible).
When we first got there I remember walking up a long shopping street. It is a
much (much) smaller city than Kyoto and as such extremely pleasant. Walking our
way up the street towards the tourist attractions (temples and tame deer) we
found our first Japanese electronics department store. Nothing gigantic, but
maybe four floors of gadgets. It was here that we saw our first Sega DreamCast
for sale, and it was probably here that I first promised Tony that we would buy
a DreamCast "when we get to Tokyo", which became a refrain every time
he wanted to buy something.
The tame deer did not disappoint; they are very aggressive and a little
scary. I shot lots
of video of Tony running away from deer even as he tried to feed them. The
temples were also interesting (although we are not really big on gigantic Buddhist
temples). I was particularly fascinated by the number of elderly Japanese men
carrying a lot of camera equipment, including very large telephoto lenses (I
recall as I write this now that we visited Nara on a Sunday).
Here
is a link to a short video clip of Tony feeding the deer.
I
suppose the most famous sight in Nara would be the Todaiji
Buddhist Temple, which is said to be the largest wooden structure in the
world. It houses the so-called Daibutsu,
or "large Buddha". My knowledge of Japanese religion can be
summarized as follows: there are Buddhist Temples and Shinto Shrines. I
enjoyed most Temples and Shrines as a place to get to - I found the people in
the crowds more interesting than the architecture itself. Unfortunately
these pictures don't really give a sense of the mobs of uniformed school
children and elderly Japanese
tourists with impressive camera equipment (the video I shot in Nara is another
story), although if you study the photograph taken from the steps of the
Daibatsu to the right you may get some idea of what it was like.
I
really enjoyed the business district of Nara more than anything else we saw
there. We went to a shopping arcade (where unfortunately I shot mostly
video) and Tony insisted that we have Sushi for lunch. I think this must
have been our first experience walking into a non-tourist type of Japanese
restaurant; it was in any case Tony's first encounter with Sushi. We
ordered by motioning to the waiter to step into the street so we could point to
plastic models of the food we wanted. I ordered plain, simple sushi with
just rice and cucumber wrapped in seaweed, and some plain old raw fish sushi for
myself (I have no idea what this stuff is called though I often eat it for
lunch). Unfortunately Tony didn't like it at all. Later we got him a
hotdog on a stick from a street vendor. In the restaurant we heard, for
the first time, another customer in a booth behind us slurping noodles. I
had read that the polite way to eat noodles was to slurp them as loudly as
possible but would not have believed this if I hadn't heard it.
Here
is a link to a short video clip shot in downtown Nara.
To
the left is a shot of Tony on the train to Kyoto returning from a day in Nara.
Nara
