Deer hunting in Nara
Trip Start
Sep 10, 2007
1
80
95
Trip End
Ongoing
Nara,
Japan
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Today we headed to the castle in Kyoto, Nijo castle. This castle is another world heritage site. It has a beautiful palace but the most spectacular part of this site are the gardens, they are really lovely. We have tried to take lots of photos so Mary can create a Japanese garden in her house.
Next we decided to go to Nara, this is the real cultural capital of Japan, its full of temples, shrines and history, and O! don't forget the deer (more on them later...).
We saw the massive 5 storey Kofuku-ji temple and the Diabutsu-den hall (this is the largest wooden building in the world). Nara has 8 world heritage sites-there is alot of do here and we only had one afternoon..
5 storey temple
.We were blessed with the weather, it was a beautiful crisp spring day. We saw the shrines in the forest, this is what I imagined Japan to be like, very mysterious and hidden away, well these places are just that.
Also, there are deer everywhere in Nara, on the streets & in the forests. You can buy deer biscuits and feed them, so they are not shy at all about coming up and annoying you. Orla made the mistake of buying the biscuits for them and she got chased by them...really funny!
After our day in Nara, we got back to Kyoto and checked into our new hostel (more hostel changing! you have to book in advance in Japan, something we are not used to doing at all, so the hostels get booked up really fast, you have to be very organised.). We booked into the "Orange Inn", this place is defo the last resort when everthing else is booked out but it was still fine. It turned out that they had the entire collection of "Only fools and horses" so Kieran was delighted. We watched an episode or 2 of that and then Kieran went to the "Onsen".
An onsen is a hot spring or a public bath and is a traditional custom in Japan. There are separate mens and womens baths and there used to be baths in every town and village in the past. Kieran headed along to the local bath to check it out. Basically, the first thing you do when you go there is take a shower, sitting down on a stool. This lasts for about 10 mins. Then you can go into any of the baths in the facility. There were jacuzzi baths, freezing cold plunge pools, warm baths with green, herbal infused water and mineral enriched waters, pools with electric currents running through it, and a sauna. It was an excellent way to spend a few hours, so relaxing.
