Today we planned to bum around Nara and hang out with their deer, and then end up at Gyokuzoin Temple, a temple you can stay at for the night.
We left Kyoto early, at 8am. We went to the Toyota rent a center and got a white Toyota Vitz! It was quite cute and narrower than an American car. Masa started to go to my side, and then I went to the driver’s side. Oops! We forgot that the sides were switched in Japan. So, we got in the car and tried to navigate our way out of Kyoto and to Nara. We had a lot of issues because google maps kept twisting us around and about, and we were still just trying to figure out how the stop signs and one-way signs worked. It was a really tight squeeze to get by the roads, when other cars or pedestrians were walking in the street. It was crazy how it was designed to be so narrow! Why make a 2-way road the width of 1.8 cars?
Finally we got onto the highway. It felt a lot like the countryside, with the spread of the buildings and also the sparseness of the businesses. We actually passed by the hibiki or yamazaki factory, and then we passed the meiji chocolate plant! It was demarcated by a massive chocolate bar in the front of the factory. We kept driving down the road. It would take about 40 minutes.
Don Quijote: Then we stopped at a family mart because we wanted to grab a few things. We got some onigiris, probably. Honestly i can’t really remember. We also went to a don quijote. It felt weird that such a crowded and chaotic store would be in the mdidle of nowhere. It was weird, it was like as dense as a small college town but there were farmlands in front of all the houses. There was a lot of farmland, but no plot of farmland was that big! The first don quijote we went to was closed! We already went up the ramp to the garage area, but it was closed. No wonder no one was there. Then, there was another don quijote down the highway. We picked up a pair of sunglasses, a suitcase for the souvenirs we were about to buy, and a little panda outfit for Santa. We stuffed it all in the trunk and picked up a bottle of hot coffee from the vending machine. Kyoto area had the first vending machines we’ve seen that had ice cream!!!!
Then we were on our way. We finally got to Nara and we parked in the closest parking lot to the temple Todai-ji.
Then we walked out of the parking lot. We couldn’t see if there was a path or not, to get out of the parking lot. So we just hopped over the low stone wall. We first walked through a small town area, and people were already starting to feed and see deer. Then we walked to todai-ji temple, and we saw the paths lined with people and deer bowing to each other!
At the gate of the temple, I saw the sweetest thing. There were 3 deer sleeping on the ground, and sitting among them were these 3 toddlers. It was THE SWEEtest thinG. We bought our tickets on the left side of the temple and went through the gates inside. There was a small walkway through the corridor of the temple, under the awning and the lawn inside the temple was yellow. You weren’t supposed to walk on it. From that pathway you could see the whole courtyard leading up to the temple. It was a very big square!
This temple was special because of the MASSIVE BUDDHA statue inside.
It was so big it didn’t even fit on camera.
They had the original lotus leaf stone or metal wrappings, and they displayed them inside. You could see the engravings, and they were so beautiful. At the back was a scale model of the temple and its accessory buildings including a decorative pagoda to the side of it.
At the exit of the temple, there were lots of stands selling a bunch of deer-themed items, like beanies, luck charms, figurines, pencils, and stuff like that. We left the temple, and continued walking along the path. We went up a series of wide stairs and a few deer followed us! We bought some crackers to bait a mommy deer and her child to follow us, and they did follow us for a bit, but they were quite skittish.
This one deer followed us up the first bank of stairs and kept bowing and eating our food. The inside just felt like a paradise of deer and humans, and it was also a damp environment covered in green moss so it felt like the shire in lord of the rings.
Then we walked to the path, and on the left was a large hill, on the right was a series of shops. Tons of deer were on the slope and some people were sitting on the benches, feeding them. It looked like a feeding frenzy.
We seemed to be at the foothills of the mountain. We went to visit some of the shops, and it was like a large multipurpose room with counters at the front with many souvenirs. One of them had a dais that had people sitting on it, on small stools, surrounded by displays of knives. We went one more house down, and they had a cafe behind the souvenir cases.
We ate here, and the udon bowl was only $6. It was a gyudon soup bowl, and it was lit over a fire!!! It was quite amaizn.g and i couldnt believe the price. It was also super filling, i couldn’t even finish it. Then we did some research and realized there was a knife shop that had been passed down from one generation to the next over hundreds of years. We went back to the that knife shop and browsed the knives for a while. I was wechatting with my mum to see if she wanted one. But she said no. I bought a damascus steel chef’s knife for about $130!
We walked down the mountain/hill and we saw many many stone lanterns lining the sides of the pathway. Many deer too. We kept feeding them and buying more crackers for them. There were lots of signs saying that since it was mating season, you should avoid aggravating the deer. Earlier, a male deer headbutted me in the butt, and his two little antlers were poking at my leg. He kept doing that even as I started walking away, and I guess he was mad that I didn’t give him any crackers. We ran away. Later, after we left the knife shop, another male deer (you can tell by the antlers) charged at me and tried to grab my paper bag. That’s why it’s crinkled in the picture above lol.
Deer stood on the sides of the walkway and begged for food by bowing. There were also lots of stone lanterns covered in moss. There were a TON. I think each one was a gift to the temple.
Then, we saw a tree growing out of a decayed and dead trunk!
We were pretty deep into the woods, and there was a small dirt path through the less trafficked part of the forest. We took that dirt path all the way and came to a deer care facility. There were small trucks that could transport deer and supplies. The information center seemed to be closed because of the holiday season, but we peered over the wooden gate and saw that there were a few pens with male deer inside. This facility cared for deer that were injured, females who were birthing, males that needed help with their antlers. We saw a few males who might have been overly aggressive and needed some time to calm down.
Walking out of the park, we came into the small town at the bottom of the park. We saw this beautiful lake.
But on the right, we could see that there was a modern looking building under construction. It wouldn’t really go with the landscape or the other wooden buildings in the town.
The first few shops on this main street were all souvenir shops. Many of the items seemed to be more high quality or locally made, compared to the other souvenir shops we went to. We got a banner/tapestry that had the Great Wave of Kanagawa printed on it, for our living room. We bought a bunch of chopsticks, a shot glass, and post cards.
Then, we saw a crowd that was spilling off the sidewalk. Everyone was gathered around this stand selling mochis! They were being made right in front of us and people were passing them out to the crowd as soon as they were coated with the warabi powder. We bought two and ate them. My face was soon covered with the sawdust-colored powder because it gets everywhere when you eat it. Inside it was red bean paste!
We went down a side street and it was a covered shopping street, just like Shinsaibashi. We bought a strawberry daifuku.
After exploring this next street, there wasn’t that much to do. Most of the buildings around us were residential. We walked through a tiny street, and even though the entrances to these buildings were small, they were still proper restaurants serving up all kinds of regional food.
We were about to leave, when we realized we had almost forgotten to get our Nara Starbucks cup. Luckily there was a Starbucks right by the parking lot! It was the most modern looking building I saw in Nara. It was a two story, steel and glass construction, and the line for Starbucks was out the door. We waited in line for 40 minutes, and we were finally able to buy the Nara mug. It was worth the wait! I thought the color combos were quite cute.
We went to the parking lot, paid, and started driving toward Gyokuzoin temple as it was getting dark.
