Nara and Osaka - Blogabond

Woke up at about 9:30 and repacked my stuff... Threw out some things that I knew I could probably live without and decided to be a lttle wiser about how to pack the bag. I realised that I had forgotten some things, most notably a plastic bag to keep my smelly clothes in. I need to pick one of those up on the way. I was in the room at about 11:05 when the man called and told me very politely that checkout time was at 11:00. I told him that I would be down in 1 minute. At 11:45 I got to the front desk and checked out, and then proceeded to get totally lost like a tourist heading towards Nara. Nara is the ancient capital of Japan and so it has... you guessed it TEMPLES! Unlike everywhere else in Japan, there are a lot of Temples, and by “unlike” I mean “exactly like”.

Nara park is an interesting place loaded with grass and trees, it is absolutely overrun by deer. These deer are not like Bambi though, they are more closely related to Cujo. These deer would frighten the Terminator with their out and out aggression. Walking through the park to get to Todaiji (the world's largest wooden structure), I spent the time avoiding deer, deer shit and people shitting themselves because of the deer. Screaming women and children were commonplace, particularly due to the availability of so-called “Shika senbei” which means deer cookies. Morons seemed to enjoy buying these cookies only to absolutely crap their pants when the deers come up to them and try to eat them, which is the reason for their existence.

Get to Todaiji. Fuck! It is massive! It is a very impressive building with a very large buddha statue inside it, and on this day it was jam-packed with Chinese tourists. I still manage to get a great view of the place as well as the inside statue of the Buddha which has him seated on some petals with his right palm showing which obviously has some significance, but I have absolutely no idea. All I know is that he is absolutely monstrous!

Trains back to Osaka and waited for the lads...

Tried to go to a small yakitori place but were told that even though there were no people in there, that there was no space for us. Sometimes I will not miss Japan at all. Telling us we can't enter because we are foreigners is just unacceptable...

Ended up in an izakaya, me, Adam, Dana, and Jeza. Good times with good mates. It is what life is about really... Another couple of bevvies up in the room, and then three hours sleep until getting up ready for the boat in the morning.

written by

Big_T on August 21, 2008 from Nara, Japan

from the travel blog: Big_T's Travel Blog

tagged Nara, Todaiji, Daibutsu and Drinks

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