21.-23.02.2018 NARA

In the morning, we called our hostel in Nara to let them know when we’ll be there to drop off our luggage and after arriving around noon, the Spanish guy (José) running the hostel, even let us check in immediately. He also gave us lots of information on what to do in Nara, so we were properly informed for our stay there.

We decided to stay in the town’s core for the rest of the day and explored all the shops and streets that we deemed interesting. Here, we found some really beautiful postcards, as opposed to traditional ones, those were drawn in a fine and really aesthetic fashion, unfortunately they only had so many designs. Striking to me was also the amount of plastic food available everywhere, they look SO real at times, I couldn’t tell the difference from a distance. Near and in the city center were lots of interesting temples and shrines, as well as an impressive 5-storied pagoda.

That day, I ate some roasted rice with beef and some kind of spicy peppers (I think), I majorly enjoyed it.

The morning of the 22nd, we visited the Mechanical Toys Museum of Nara, which our host had highly recommended to us the day before. We went in there without high expectations, but it turned out to be really interesting – one was allowed/expected to try out all of the toys, for example a stick with notches and a propeller on top which started turning when you rub the stick with another stick (while searching for a pic for reference, I found out that those things are called gee-haw whammy diddle in English or Hui-Hui-Maschine in German – wtf).

Anyways, we didn’t spend the whole day there, but went on to explore Nara Park, famous for the many many free-running more-or-less-tame deer. Tourists can feed the deer with crackers that are being sold at every corner and the deer definitely know how the wind blows.

 

Inside the park, there are many temples, for example Yakushi-ji and Todi-ji Temple – the latter is known for its great Buddha. When we got there, we saw a stand offering a free English Guide and at first I thought it would just be an information pamphlet, but then the sweet lady at the stand actually got up and gave us a 10-minutes tour, talking about the Buddha and the Temple that was built around it for protection. She also showed us how it looked 300 years ago add that the golden things on the roofs aren’t horns, but a fish-tail. That is to symbolize the Temple being underwater, as buildings like this one are prone to burning down.

For lunch I had a baked sweet potato (which tasted amazing btw) and while walking and eating, I was suddenly being followed by a few deer we almost couldn’t get rid of anymore. One of them even grabbed my jacket, the other nudged my back almost aggressively. We just kinda hung out in the park all afternoon, walking around and looking at temples and other sights, then went back to the hostel to make plans for the following days.

BGC: 27 (3)