Winding down

After Hiroshima the girls had a few unplanned days. We decided that if the day after Hiroshima was nice we would go to Nara, if not we would stay in Osaka and hang out. Lucky for us the weather was great.

It was another special day because we were going to meet people. This time we were going to meet our friend Ikuyo, and Taisuke again.

We all met in Tsuruhashi and discovered Taisuke and his friend from Korea named Hyun-Kyu.

Apparently the two met in Portsmouth England. Taisuke was working and studying while Hyun-kyu was just studying. Once we got to Nara we all got a group picture taken. Well, all except the photographer that is.

Nara is a place that is well known over Japan and the world. It is known in Japan for it's deer.

Like the ones in Miyajima they also like to eat things like paper, train tickets and maps. Luckily for us we were smarter than the average bear.

Plus we also followed the instructions on the signs.


The other thing that Nara is famous for is Todaiji Temple. Pictures always fail to capture the size of the building unless you look really hard and notice that the people are tiny in comparision.

The effect is clearly seen when you take pictures on the approach way to the temple itself. It was forbidden but we did it anyway.

Why is Todaiji so famous? Well it's the largest wooden building in the world for one, and it houses the largest metal Buddha statue in the world as well.

Again the pictures don't do the statue justice. There is the main buddha which is flanked on each side by a smaller buddha. You have to go and see for yourself.

On a side note you can also see a pillar with a hole on the bottom near the floor. It is said that if you can wiggle your way through you will have one year of good health.

Jamie wasn't keen on being sick so she wiggled through. Jamie also noticed that anyone can leave a lasting mark on Todaiji without resorting to graffiti. You can donate 1000yen and you can decorate a roof tile which would be used to repair the roof over the years.

She included everyone's name and wrote a little inscription on it for good luck. So we finished our tour of the temple so we could do whatever we wanted. The girls of course wanted to go shopping so the boys decided to go get some pictures. As you can see the girls tried all sorts of things on.

They made sure to hit all the souvenirs stalls on the way out.

Jamie and I have been to Nara before, but that was over two years ago and we only had a low end digital camera which couldn't auto focus to save it's life. I wanted to get more pictures to make up for the ones we didn't or couldn't get.

So with Hyun-hyu and Tai, I made sure to get some photos of the surrounding park. It was too bad that the camera over exposed most of the pics or maybe I should say that I didn't set the camera correctly so the sky was white instead of the nice blue colour. At least a few good ones came out.