Nara Trip #1

I woke up at 6:30 am because it was laundry day for me but I had stayed in on Friday so I got plenty of sleep. I did laundry and was out of the house by 9:30. I met with Andra outside of the Softbank store where I got my prepaid cell. It has been incredible difficult to coordinate trips through faulty/crappy internet signals at home. ( If you want my email for the phone message me on facebook. Japanese cell phones don't use the texting system- it is an email system. You can email directly to my phone and I reply just as fast as texting would.) At 11:00 we met with John and Emily and we started our journey to Nara. We had an hour long train trip, and we transfered only once. We went to Todai-ji temple which is a HUGE temple with an ENORMOUS Buddha statue in it. We went to Nara park where we fed deer.. got bitten by deer... got head butted by deer.. got chased by deer... and stepped in deer poo. We walked up to Nigatsudo where we could see the entire city. We went to the Shrine of a Thousand lanterns. We ended the day with more deer feeding and then we went to the light show.

Todai-ji temple has the biggest cast iron Buddha in the world. It is the religous center for a specific Buddhist sect, which I do not know of. The original building burned down and another was built in it's place, so this huge building used to be bigger. Inside there is Buddha, and two deity things on either side. We walked around to see him from the back. The posts to hold the building up were huge to. One had this hole carved out of it. It was said that if you could pass through it, then you are a virtuous person. Naturally the only non-virtuous person of our group tried, John, and he passed through rather quickly.

We walked up the mountain to Nigatsudo. (Made me tiiiired) This place was very high up and there was a very pretty view, so we all stopped to take a million photos. All along the way there are deer and we feed them every once in a while. Needless to say, we washed our hands at every water hole. We had lunch on the way to the Shrine of a Thousands Lanterns, which is a Shinto shrine. (Again, in Japan, mixing religions isn't abnormal, you can be many thigns at once). There was a pathway of old lanterns, comnig up the the shrine which was surrounded by more lanterns. They light one every year.

Deer in Nara, are sacred, so if you hit them with a car, steal em, etc. you get in BIG trouble. It used to be a capital offense. They trim the horns so they don't kill tourists and for the most part they are pretty safe. There are signs everywhere, in Japanese, telling people to not just feed the small cute deer, but the large older ones as well, otherwise they will get angry. We fed all types to there werent any angry deer. Some deer are territorial so they 'claim' a person and follow them, and bite at other deer. If you don't feed them fast enough they will snip at your bags or coat... my coat for example was covered in deer spit.. EWW. John was like a deer whisperer that day and got chased by deer even when we stopped to eat some human snacks. The pictures tell it all, so wait a big for them. They are coming.