Nara (Sunday)

Sunday morning I was up at 5:30 am (probably because I was so tired that I fell asleep at 9:00 the night before) and I waited until 7:00 to get the boys up. We headed to Nara, which is south of Kyoto. We took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Nara and that was neat. We went to the Todai-Ji temple which has the largest Buddah statue in the world. As we walked into the park we were greeted by tame deer which roam the park. There are thousands of them and you can buy stuff and feed them (which we didn't do but had fun watching others do it). This place was huge, and I had no idea what I was going to see when we walked into this temple. We walked through the doors and there in front of us was a Buddah that had to be at least 3-4 stories tall. The temple that houses this, the Daibutsuden is actually the biggest wooden structure in the world (I was mistaken on my previous post). We also saw a five story pagoda here. Then we went to the Nara National Museum and wandered around there for awhile.

We left Nara and headed back up to Kyoto to meet up with Ike's friend Alberto. They went to school together at Kansai-Gadai a few years ago. We went to lunch and then to Rokuon-Ji Temple (The Golden Pavilion). The path leading up to this temple has a pond, which reflects the Golden Pavilion and is beautiful. We walked the pathways throughout the gardens. Along the way there would be these little stone bowls where you could toss coins and try to make it into the bowl for good luck (I missed). :-) We then went to the Ryoanji Temple, but the Zen garden was under construction. It was still pretty to walk around the temple, though. After this we decided to try to take the subway instead of the bus and we wandered around these little streets looking for the train station. Finally we came upon some tracks and there was a little station where one train car at a time came through. Ike and Alberto figured out which one to take and we ended up transfering to about four different trains until we found our way back to Kyoto. We ate supper at this tiny (REALLY tiny!) restaurant and we had a delicious meal. Then Alberto headed back home and we headed back to the hostel to crash, once again. :-)