NARA (Kyoto trip day two)

Due to my apparent decline in interest in blogging, this entry is coming so late that I only vaguely remember what happened that day.  Thank goodness for pictures.

I do remember that as transportation planner I was a little bit dissatisfied with my own work.  Train rides always seem to take longer and cost more money than anticipated.  Thanks to one of the random people that assume we don't understand Japanese and need help with something--we run into this kind of person quite a lot, and they always walk the line between being really helpful and really obnoxiously rude--we were able to transfer trains correctly and arrive without too much trouble.  Following that, we did the most logical thing possible: go straight to the nearest tourist information center.


You won't see any platypi smoking at THIS station, no sirree!


There we were met with the usual, "Ah!  Westerners!  They must therefore be American! Where's the English speaker?" who turned out to be actually very helpful.  We ended up basing our route mostly on her suggestion, and enjoyed ourselves a lot.


Before I continue, a couple of general notes about Nara:

If you go to Kyoto for any decent length of time, you should go to Nara.  It isn't very far away (an hour or so by train), the tourist destinations are closer together and hence it's easier to get around just by walking, there a plenty of tasty shops to find, and if you know anything about Nara, you probably know that it's famous for...

DEER!  Lots and lots of tame deer that want to eat deer crackers at your expense.  Unfortunately, since we had come during spring, we didn't get to see any antlers.  All of the male deer just had odd looking stubs on the tops of their heads.  Buu.


Then again, maybe it was safer that way.  As the sign indicates, "Butt."



Though apparently this only happens to elderly ladies and little girls, so maybe we would have been fine.


There were also shrines, I guess.




This picture should give you an idea of the size.  Although I admit Tina isn't very big, she's doing her best, so give her a hand.


We walked up these stairs, and although that isn't really ample reason to post a picture of them, I like it so I'm putting it here anyway:



From there we entered Nara Park through this large, red arch. (Okay, so it's not an arch.  I can't remember it's name, but anyhow...)




As you may have guessed, Nara Park is the home of the majority of the deer in Nara, so we were good 'n ready to see us some deer.


Look at how excited Tina is with her senbei!


Little did we know, buying sembei attracts deer rather quickly, and that excitement quickly turned to fright on Tina's part.  Unfortunately, since Tina was holding the camera, I don't have a picture of this, but let it suffice to say that when we turned around from taking the above picture, there were already four or five deer behind us that were eventually joined by a couple more.  Tina frantically gave me her senbei and ran into a metaphorical corner, leaving me to feed the hungry deer.  We were told the deer bow while asking for senbei, but I'm not sure if it counts when their head is already up against my leg.  They're also fond of chomping, as the picture posted earlier indicated, to get peoples' attention.

Mmmm, map.

This is where my memory gets fuzzy.  I remember eating green tea flavored ice cream and lots and lots of deer, a giant Buddha statue, deer, and a surprisingly cheap, tasty restaurant.  Look at the pictures and make up a story in your head.

The white stuff is some powerful sunbleaching from years gone by, I believe.

Do note the size, or it's not nearly as interesting.

This became more interesting when we found out that the model itself is over 100 years old.

A good view can be had from this temple.

Namely this one.

And last, but certainly not least:

WOAH.

Stay tuned for the last portion of the Kyoto Trip.  You may want to shut off your set to conserve energy though. >.<