Nara, Japan- October 2007

We arrived late in the afternoon into Nara and checked into the lovely little Ryokan Matsumae and headed straight uphill to the Nigatsu-do Temple to watch the sunset over Nara. As the sun was setting, the deer were making bizarre calling noises to each other. The deer in Nara were once holy creatures, now they’re pests. They did, however, provide great amusement for the hundreds of Japanese school children who filtered through the sites everyday. I think seventy-five percent of the photos most of these children took were of deer peeing, deer loving other deer and deer eating biscuits.

Nara was one of our favorite places. It was smaller than Kyoto but had many sites. It was easier to walk around the city, easier to find a nice place to eat and easier to get a hotel. We discovered our favorite sushi restaurant (in the covered market). We visited the largest wooden structure in the world. We had some excellent green tea ice cream. Most of what we loved was just strolling through the city. For those who have trouble, the only ATM that would accept our card was the convenience store in the covered market near the Kintetsu train station.

Here are the places we visited.

• Todai-ji Temple: The temple complex stretches through much of Nara and features the largest wooden structure in the world. The Buddha inside has fingers the size of a person!
• Shosoin Treasure House: We weren’t able to visit the place inside, but the outside was interesting and a good example of traditional azekura building style.
• Nara City Museum of Photography: A bit out of the way but a nice stroll through the woods if you take the right route. Great building!

Here are the places we ate that we liked:

• Kaiten Sushi Totogin was our favorite sushi restaurants. We wondered in off the street because it looked nice and we were very pleasantly surprised. The sushi seemed fresher on the conveyor belt than what we’d had before and the sushi chef kept surprising us with excellent choices.
• Ten-Ten Cafe was a cute little place we stopped into when we were starving. I can’t verify that the food was excellent but it tasted great at the time. Great tea!

We caught the train out on our second evening back to Kyoto then the night train to Tokyo.