Because of some travel screw ups (turns out there's more than one place in Japan named Mino, and I had us scheduled to go to the wrong one - oops!), we had a free day to play with today. Tom had read about and seen some information about Nara, and on a whim, we decided to activate our rail passes anyway and travel an hour south of Kyoto for the day. On our way there, we met a couple from California also visiting Kyoto, and they recommended we also check out Arashiyama, a suburb of Kyoto, so we decided to split the day and spend the morning and early afternoon in Nara, and then shoot over to Arashiyama for the later afternoon. I'll blog about the latter later.
Nara Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture and it is known quite famously for the tamed deer that live in the large central park, Nara Park. The park contains several more temples and shrines, and all collectively, it's another UNESCO World Heritage Site. We arrived not really knowing what to expect, but the deer were pretty awesome, if a bit aggressive. The second they see you have "cookies", you can expect to be surrounded by 4 or 5 deer, pushing to get a cookie, and biting your clothes, backpack, or whatever else they can get their teeth into in the meantime. Check out the photos below for a funny sequence of Tom feeding the deer, running out of cookies, and running away.
After feeding the deer and taking (a lot) of photos of them, we toured Todai-ji temple, the most famous of the temples in Nara and home to the largest bronze statue of the Buddha Vairocana in the world. It was one of the largest temples, heightwise, that we've seen yet, and was pretty impressive. Following that, we walked through another section of Nara Park to the lovely Ukimido Pavilion, which is famous for its yearly paper lantern festival. Then, we had a lovely tempura lunch, and caught the train back to Kyoto to visit Arashiyama.
Nara Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture and it is known quite famously for the tamed deer that live in the large central park, Nara Park. The park contains several more temples and shrines, and all collectively, it's another UNESCO World Heritage Site. We arrived not really knowing what to expect, but the deer were pretty awesome, if a bit aggressive. The second they see you have "cookies", you can expect to be surrounded by 4 or 5 deer, pushing to get a cookie, and biting your clothes, backpack, or whatever else they can get their teeth into in the meantime. Check out the photos below for a funny sequence of Tom feeding the deer, running out of cookies, and running away.
After feeding the deer and taking (a lot) of photos of them, we toured Todai-ji temple, the most famous of the temples in Nara and home to the largest bronze statue of the Buddha Vairocana in the world. It was one of the largest temples, heightwise, that we've seen yet, and was pretty impressive. Following that, we walked through another section of Nara Park to the lovely Ukimido Pavilion, which is famous for its yearly paper lantern festival. Then, we had a lovely tempura lunch, and caught the train back to Kyoto to visit Arashiyama.