Nara...Thank goodness Michelle is over her fear of Deer!

Following the recommendation of a few of our guesthouse mates as well as Tami chan, we set aside a day to see the main sights in Nara. Only 35 minutes from Kyoto, Nara was the capital of Japan in the 8th century and still holds many impressive sites that we were excited to see.

Skipping a proper breakfast to make our train, our first item on the agenda was getting something to eat. We were lucky to stop at a wonderful place, Okaru, for a famous regional dish, Okonomiyaki, a type of Japanese pancake. The restaurant was small and we sat typical Japanese style on mats with our legs tucked underneath. We ordered the house special, a mixture of various seafood, as well as the pumpkin and cheese and it was cooked right in front of us as we watched with great delight.





The meal was wonderful, right at the top of our favorites in Japan and the entire trip for that matter. We were stuffed and happy and ready to get out and enjoy the day.

Our first temple, Kofukuji, was right around the corner from lunch so we wasted little time in getting right into the sights. The pagoda here is a rare 5 story pagoda and is the second tallest in Japan, second only to one at the palace in Kyoto. Here's Michelle doing the traditional Japanese photography pose that she has mastered on the trip.



Here's another view of the pagoda, this time with some beautiful wisteria making an appearance.



The great thing about Nara is that the majority of the sights are located within Nara Park which takes up the eastern half of the city. Because of this we enjoyed a great stroll from the Kofukuji temple to a tranquil garden. A lovely traditional Japanese garden, this was a great place for us to relax and take in the beauty of our surroundings.



Michelle caught this cool image of the garden reflected from the window of one of the buildings...



The main attraction in Nara is undoubtedly Todai-Ji, a temple complex on which sits Daibutsuden, the Great Buddha Hall. Daibutsuden is recognized as the world's largest wooden building, even though it is only 70% as large as its original size.




Within Daibutsuden sits a gigantic buddha known as Daibutsu. This statue is 15 metres tall and was originally constructed in 743. Along with the reclining Buddha in Bangkok and the Buddha made of sandalwood in Beijing, this Buddha makes up the third member of our All-Asia Buddha statue line-up, and would be a formidable opponent in any 3 on 3.





When we mentioned we were going to Nara everyone said, look out for the deer, so we knew they would have quite the presence, but we didn't know they would be everywhere.



From the first temple to the last and everywhere in between deer are walking around and being fed by tourists who purchase cakes for them from street vendors. All these deer necessitate precautions by the authorities to make sure nothing bad happens, and this leads to some great signage...





The rest of the afternoon was spent next to another couple dozen deer in a park reading and relaxing before moving on to Osaka for the night. Nara was a perfect day trip and we would have really missed out had we not visited.