Category Archives: Travel
Nara Street Scene
Nara
Stop the presses! According to some of this blog’s more persnickety readers, the creature in the previous post was in fact a deer. Your blogger has never claimed to be an expert in taxonomy, and did not even know that deers and yaks were related.
Point being that you can find darn near anything wandering the streets—deer, yaks, moas, poodles, you name it—so it pays to be careful.
Anyway, these friendly mammals are all over the place in Nara, and they’re friendly mainly because people keep feeding them, which they’re able to do because there are stands everywhere selling crackers to feed to the deer. And it will not surprise you to learn that there is a temple involved.
So people flock to Nara to see the deer (and the temple) and spend money to feed the deer.
This also provides jobs for industrious citizens.
The temple, Todai-ji, is billed as the largest wooden structure in the world, even though it isn’t anymore. And it contains the largest Buddha statue in Japan.
I haven’t seen any other Buddha statues to compare it to, but it does indeed seem pretty large. There’s another statue next to it, which is not as large, but is still pretty large. You would probably comment on how large it was if the Buddha statue weren’t even larger.
Also, there’s a gift shop In the temple.
The Yaks of Nara
The streets of Nara seem to be populated by a local species of yak.
Mt. Inari
Two train stops south of Kyoto is Inari, home of the Fushimi-Inari shrine. Although I’m pretty much templed out at this point, this seemed worthwhile because A) I was on my way to Nara on that train line anyway and B) it sounded sort of weird.
Just across the street from the train station is a large torii gate and a path leading up to a fairly standard looking temple. Beyond that, however, are more torii gates. A lot more.
There are long tunnels of these snaking up the mountain. Every now and then there’s a break in the tunnels, with a shrine or group of shrines off to one side. The shrines have piles of gates on them and next to them.
And there are extra gates around in case you need them.
There are thousands of these things, and they fade over time, so they have to keep painting them continuously, like the Golden Gate Bridge.
Many of the gates had a pair of dogs in front: one with a ball in its mouth and one with a stick. Here, boy!
Most of them had those red bibs. This one had a hat.
The whole thing looped to the top of the mountain and back down again. Mt. Inari is only about 700 feet high, making it more of a hill than a mountain, but there was a lot up and down. I was glad to get to the observation point with a view of Kyoto.
As I was standing there, a group of school kids came running up the steps.
One girl of about eight decided to practice her English on me.
Girl: Hello!
Me: Hello. How are you?
Girl: Hello!
So that was as far as that went. I went back down the mountain, said hello to some British tourists and German backpackers*, and got on the train for Nara.
* Different ones.
Buddhist Stone People
International Traveler Note
To expedite business transactions in Japan, it helps to pay with Japanese currency. Trying to pay with Korean currency causes a certain amount of confusion.
Speaking of international travelers, I think I saw more Westerners in Kyoto the first evening I was here than I did the whole time I was in Kyushu. And half of the ones I saw on Kyushu were German backpackers at Mt. Aso*. The sushi place I’ve been going to has been full of Japanese people most of the time, but last night I was there a little later and there were mostly Americans and Europeans, all going for the California roll. A really tall Scandinavian guy kept bumping his head on the lanterns.
* Of course there were German backpackers. There are always German backpackers.
Lanterns
Buddhist Graveyard
A Panoply of Temples
I tried to find Kiyomizu-dera, most of which dates from 1633 and is supposed to be one of the grandest of the Kyoto temples. There are temples all over the place here, and I certainly wasn’t going to see them all, so focusing on two or three of the best seemed like a good approach.
Using my guide book map, I thought I had found it.
But that wasn’t it. I don’t know what temple that was. So I went out the side and started up the hill. It was a narrow street with houses, cafes, and…gravestones.
They’re very close together, so either the people were cremated or they were buried standing up. Anyway, they became more numerous until they covered the whole hillside.
Then there were some steps that passed through a gate…
…and I found the temple.
But when I got to the entrance, it was very crowded.
The main artifact of this temple is an eleven-headed Kannon. I don’t know what that is, but anything with eleven heads pretty much has to be interesting. However, they only display it once every 33 years, and the next time is in 2033. I wasn’t going to wait.
So I went back toward where the crowds were coming from. Apparently, that’s the way most people come up.
I bought some anpan from a vendor and shoved my way through the crowd.
The side streets were quieter.
Then I ran across another temple.
And another.
And another.
But none of them had eleven-headed things, so I squeezed past the tambourine guy and hopped across the river to get something to eat.
