Feeding DEER in NARA
5:17 PM
Our next day in Japan involved getting up early (again)
We knocked out early the day before so we were ready to wake up and get going! We packed up and checked out, but had the hotel hold on to our luggage. We walked next door to the pastry shop and got a pan au chocolat, melonpan, and a jam roll! All were excellent. We also grabbed a chocolate drink which was SO delicious, and walked to the train station.
We got on a train to Nara and passed through some more beautiful Japanese towns and cities. The girls on the train were practicing their English and Randy and I were dying with laughter, they were so cute!
When we got off the train there was an English speaking station so Randy and I went up there to talk to them, and give them a chance to talk to someone! They were SO happy we had come to speak English to them! We got on a bus to the Nara deer park and BAM. Deer were EVERYWHERE!
We ran off the bus and went to buy the little biscuit cracker pancake things everyone was selling for us to feed to the deer. We started feeding the deer and honestly had SO much fun feeding them. There were SO many so if a few were sleeping or weren't hungry, there were dozens more that were starving. Once you fed one it would follow you around and four or five others would join until you had a swarm. Deer would cross the streets when the lights changed and many deer would bow to us before we fed them. We fed the deer for ages, then decided to walk around Nara more. We went to the Todaiji temple, which is the largest wooden structure still standing, and it was UNREAL. We saw the giant Buddha in the Buddha hall, saw tons of statues and a beautiful grounds. In all the shrines and temples there is an area for you to cleanse your hands before you go in which is beautiful and fun. The stairs at the temple were INSANELY steep, we were practically doing high-knees to get up there. We walked around the Todaiji temple grounds and then kept walking around the rest of Nara park.
My mom was asking me to write down what all the shrines and temples mean or were used for, so Todaiji was one of the Seven Great Temples of Japan, and was a place for Buddhist worship, and still is today.
As we were walking through the park we came upon a little home ramen shop, and decided to head in! It was delicious food, great ramen and rice and randy had this weird mochi and sesame jello thing. We ordered a combo which we didn't realize came with tea! Randy was worried it would be rude to just leave the tea, so after we finished our ramen, we poured the tea into the broth, we were giggling the whole way out! We saw these giant bells, and kept walking and saw a bunch more shrines. We even saw a family doing a baby blessing type thing in one of them. There were just a bunch of places for Buddhist worship and they were all beautiful.
We ended up spending more money on the crackers for the deer (we may have spent like $30 on crackers alone.) but it was too fun not to!
After we'd been in Nara for hours we decided to get back on the train and head back to Kyoto. We grabbed our luggage, said goodbye to Inari, and then got on another train back to Tokyo!
We loved our time in Kyoto and were sad we couldn't stay for longer.
We got back to the hotel near Bakurocho station, grabbed some curry for dinner, and went to sleep!
0 comments