Nara Park

Hello everyone! My life in Japan is starting to slow down. I have 3 more school days and they are only 40 minutes class period. After that I will have 11 or so days to travel around Japan. This experience is so unique because I get to live life like a normal Japanese person and when I don’t have school get to be a tourist. On Friday my classmates traveled to different colleges to get a campus tour. I did not go to school but instead traveled to Nara with my host mom. I had briefly researched Nara and discovered I would be seeing a lot of deer but besides that I didn’t know what to expect. She let me sleep in so we got a pretty late start. We took the train to Nara. We had to change trains a couple of times but it wasn’t too confusing. I slept on the train so it went by pretty quickly. Our destination was Nara Park.. Once arriving at the station around 11:45 we set off on foot for lunch. My host mom took me to a small Italian restaurant for lunch. It was very nice! I will attach images below. After that I went to many shrines. I was a complete tourist. I wore a hat with sunglasses and carried a camera in my hand. I stood in inconvenient places to take pictures and switched lenses from my back pack. Most of my favorite pictures did not come from the large historic buildings themselves but things around them. It’s hard to get a good picture of something that is seen by thousands everyday. I will show some of my favorites at the end of this. I really enjoyed my time in Nara. It felt like a nice slow walk through a very large park. I rested when my feet got tired and took pictures of what I thought was cool.

First I went to Kofukuchi temple. Inside were many statues. In front was nice green grass. A lawn is not something I have really experienced in Japan. Most things are covered in concrete. Even my school’s soccer field is dirt. Next we walked to Todaiji. Todaiji had a very large buddha inside. I was in awe of the size. It was inside a very, very large 1 room building. It is extremely old and I am not sure how it was built. I got my gochuin book stamped. I walked around the Buddha and looked at various statues. In one of the main support wood dowels that has a diameter of 3 feet, there is a rectangle cut out. Many people tried to climb through the hole but my shoulders are much too wide. After we had toured throughout the building, we sat on a bench outside and rested for a little while. After a few minutes, we started up the hill side. Every minute that passed we saw fewer and fewer people. The only thing I could hear was the cicadas, talking in the trees. There were a few gift shops that we passed so we stopped and got ice cream. I chose caramel ice cream. It was very cool because it came in a little container and then it was put into a press and came out like a soft serve cone. It was very refreshing but it did not last me long. We then continued our walk towards Kasugataisha, a very quiet place hidden up in the woods. It felt very peaceful. I had a great time walking through enjoying the natural and ancient beauty. I again got my goshuin book stamped. It’s very satisfying watching them dip the fude or brush into the jet black ink and then fearlessly write on the white paper. That brought my total up to 8 stamps. We then descended the hillside walking beneath a lush canopy of green. This is were I feel the most as peace. Away from the hustle and bustle of the city, in places where everything is alive and well. It was about a 30 minute walk back to the train station. My feet ached and I was tired but I had really enjoyed my time in Nara. I was excited to see how my pictures had turned out. I was pretty sure that I had taken some good ones. I slept on most of the train ride home so it went very quickly. We arrived back at Naruo station and walked back to my house reaching it at about 8 o’clock.

My host family, all being at their own destination, slowly arrived one by one after me. It was about 9:45 when we went to go get dinner. We took the car to a steak shop. I for some reason decided to order 450 grams of steak (about 1 pound). I ate all of it but I was extremely full. I went to bed that night stuffed but happy. Over all I had a very nice day.