Deer and Okonomiyaki

We left our noisy hostel and got the train to Nara. We had actually received one Couchsurfing reply from a girl in Nara, but it was just to say she could no longer host people, however her boyfriend was running a hostel next door, and would we like to book in. At first we had resisted, hoping for another response but, of course, there were none so we emailed back to say we would like to stay. It was the going rate for a dorm room at ¥2500 per person, which was really too much for us, since this was half of our daily budget.

Arriving in Nara, we soon realised the directions were terrible again. We had no faith that we were going the right direction at all and had to make a couple of guesses, but we did end up in the right place. It wasn't really a hostel at all, just someone's house; a very moody American's house it seemed. He did none of the usual checking in stuff like checking our passports to take down details and getting us to sign a book. It was presumably all unofficial, untaxed, and I suspect the whole Couchsurfing profile was just a scam, designed to reel people in without going through any of the official channels. Still, our room was nice although Joanne complained that the kitchen and toilets were the dirtiest we had seen in Japan and not up to the standard of a hostel.

Two buildings of the temple

More of the temple

We had arrived quite late, so most of the tourist sites were closed or would be soon. There was a temple quite close to the “hostel” called Kōfuku-ji, so we left to make sure we at least saw something that day. The main attractions of the temple were two pagodas, dating from 1143 and 1426. The older one is a five storey pagoda, and is the second tallest in Japan. It was OK, but the Japanese style just doesn't do it for me. It's not particularly pretty, intricate, or ornate. It's wood and it's brown. Just behind the Pagoda, though, were a few deer wandering around, obviously very tame. There are loads of deer, which were considered messengers of the gods and are now national treasures. We had read in the Lonely Planet that you can buy deer biscuits to feed to them, but the shop was on tomorrow's route.

Tame deer

Deer hassling a man

Me stroking a deer

Lovely sake cup (filled with lovely sake)

Joanne had picked up a tourist map of Nara, and spotted an advert for a sake brewery which sold sake ice cream. It sounded like a local speciality to me so we had to seek it out. Unfortunately Japanese directions struck again and we spent quite a lot of time seeking it out. Eventually Joanne spotted it on the map nowhere near where we had been looking because it was supposed to be “west then on the left” from a temple, when it was actually South East. By the time we realised it was already closed, but we had discovered a nice little drinking place with some Japanese people sitting outside. We had a couple of nice draft beers and a couple a nice sakes, which were served in a lovely decorated square cup. I quite liked Nara. We decided the key to Japan was to avoid the big cities like Tokyo and Kyoto and concentrate on the small places, which seem to be prettier.

Drinking sake

We weaved our way home to discover three Americans, one of whom was Japanese-American. The Japanese-American, Yu, was married to Kim; originally they had got married so he could stay in the country because, despite living nearly his whole life in America, was not a citizen, and when his dad had decided to move back to Japan, he would have had to leave too. Kim and Yu had since had a proper wedding, having got the legal convenience stuff out of the way several years earlier. They were also on a year-long round-the-world honeymoon. The last American, Moses, had joined them for a holiday in the middle of their trip; something, we explained, that we had been hoping at least one of our friends would do, but it didn't look like it was going to happen.

Latching on to their Japanese language advantage, we agreed to out with them for Okonomiyaki, since the Quebecois in Kyoto had raved about the stuff. Unfortunately the restaurant was closed and we went to the supermarket for food instead. Somehow we came out with two litres of sake and the Americans with loads of beer. When we returned a German girl called Julia had also joined the collective, and we all sat down to eat and drink. Really it was too much drink and Kim and Yu went to bed before it was all finished, however Moses, Julia, and the two of us were silly enough to go to the 7-11, which seems to sell alcohol 24 hours, and buy more of it. The dreaded Strong Zero strikes again!

Plastic food

Marauding deer in front of the gate to Daibutsu-den

We slept in late, when we really shouldn't have. We had several things we planned to see before getting the train to Kawaguchi-ko near Mount Fuji. We decided to forget the rest and just go for the big-hitter: Tōdai-ji a temple whose grounds contained Daibutsu-den hall, the largest wooden building in the world. On the way I remembered to take some photos of the awful plastic representations of the food restaurants have outside. I think it's meant to entice you in, but it always looks horrible. The temple was absolutely crawling with deer and children.

It seems to be a popular place for school outings. The hall was indeed very impressive, and the deer, although cute, were at times a bit on the precocious side. I saw a couple of stags nudging people with their antlers when they saw that they had deer biscuits. It looked like all of the deer's anltlers had been blunted, and a good thing too! I bought a pack of biscuits too, and took great pleasure in feeding them to the eager deer. Joanne is not an animal lover so she wasn't interested, but I persuaded her to feed one for a photo opportunity.

It's big

On the way back to pick up our bags from the hostel we passed an okonomiyaki place, which was advertised in English as “Japanese pizza”. It was nothing of the sort, but it was very tasty. It's a batter mixed with meat, vegetables, and sauce and cooked on a griddle, more like a savoury pancake. It's then served on a griddle sunk into your table. Apparently cheaper places leave you to mix and cook it yourself, but ours was delivered mostly cooked; okonomiyaki means “cook what you like”.

My okonomiyaki

Joanne's okonomiyaki

At the station we asked to book seats for Kawaguchi-ko, but we were told that it wasn't possible because we were too late. We hadn't really considered that the trains might stop so early because Mount Fuji is such a tourist destination, we thought. We were told that to get there we would have to go to Mishima, change for Gotemba, then change again there. But we had missed the last train so we would have to get a bus. We weren't happy about getting a bus since we had paid for our rail pass, but we had also booked accommodation so we needed to get there. When trying to confirm the instructions she seemed to change her story and told us we would have to stay the night in Gotemba and get the bus in the morning. This was very confusing: why would we want to get the bus in the morning when we could get a train? We decided the only two options we had were to go back to and ask to stay another night or go onto Kyoto. We decided on Kyoto, since it would mean an earlier start the next day as it's closer to Mount Fuji. We didn't think we'd have any problem booking accommodation since it wasn't the weekend. However when Joanne called our hostel in Kawaguchi-ko and asked for our booking to be moved, but they were fully booked the next night.