Nara

7/22 - A Giant Buddha and Lots of Deer

Leaving our Kyoto homebase, we headed to the nearby city of Nara. Nara is the first permanent capital of Japan, established in 710, and is considered second – behind Kyoto – as a showcase of Japan’s historical legacy. Our hotel here was actually in the tourist center and was government run. It took the form of a sort of modern ryokan in that we slept on roll out mats on tatami covered floors, but still had our own bathrooms and amenities in the room. I actually really liked this place.

We started exploring by heading to Insuien Garden, but on the way we were sidetracked a bit by one of Nara’s famous features, the deer. The deer are everywhere in Nara. They wander the streets, hang out at temples, and sleep in front of store entrances. They are really quite friendly, though seeing people’s casual interactions with them makes me wonder how often people get bit due to selfies.

Insuien Garden is very lovely. The layout is phenomenal and its situated in such a way to utilize the natural backgrounds outside of the garden as well – the mountains/hills in the distance and temple roofs just outside. If it weren’t for the idling truck sounds from the nearby parking lot, it would probably rank amongst the top gardens for me. The complex also had a small museum about the garden’s founder and general Nara patron that was quaint and informative as well.

A short walk from the garden was one of the city’s highlights, Todai-ji Temple, the house of a giant buddha. On the walk up to the temple was a little desk that had a sign for ‘free tours’ and a sign saying ‘back at 1’ with a bunch of old men sitting around the table eating lunch. It was 12:57, so Sam convinced me that we should wait, and it was a good choice. Our guide was a great old dude who explained the history of everything. How it had been built in 700 as a zen temple to serve as a focal point to bring peace to the warring regions. How it had burnt down twice and the version we were seeing was built in the 1700s and was considerably smaller than the original version but was still the largest wooden building in the world when it was built. He pointed out that the brass bell out front was still the original from 700. And he further explained the complex technological problem they had to overcome to actually build a Buddha of this size (largest brass Buddha in the world, for what that’s worth). It was all very fascinating. On the last point, this Buddha is huge. Pictures do not do it justice, it is massive.

Another short walk on was the Kasuga-taisha shrine. More known for its mystery inducing trails, lamps and deer, the main buildings are also intriguing. Here too, rows of elaborate lamps line the passageways and the layout pulls you in to the main temple. Exploring the trails, as expected, was what really made it interesting. Hidden shrines, rows of stone lamps and what I assumed was a painting class that had spread out to make sketches made for a pleasing walk.

On our way back to the hotel we stopped at the botanical garden. It claims to be the oldest Manyo botanical garden – a Manyo botanical garden contains all of the plants and flowers mentioned in the Manyo-shu (Ten-Thousand Tanka: the oldest anthology of tanka poems). So that was something. It didn’t quite compare to other gardens, but it was still neat.

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