Nara

We have had a very busy weekend, if I do say so myself.  On Saturday, we got up nice and early and caught the 7:43 train going to Nara.  Nara was the capital of Japan from 710 to 794 and during that period temples and shrines were built.

                When we arrived, we went to Kofukuji Temple.  The temple is made up of multiple buildings including a 3 and 5 story pagoda, a couple octagon shaped buildings, a main hall, and a museum.  As soon as we climbed up the steps we saw a man with a sign advertising free tours.  As I read the sign, he offered us a free tour.  I asked at what time and he said that we could start right now.  Adam and I ended up getting a free hour and a half tour of this temple (even though he advertised just 20 minute tours).  I guess he’s a part of a group of volunteers who give tours to foreign tourists.  I think they do it to practice their English.  He was a really good tour guide and was able to answer almost all of our questions and we learned a lot about Buddhism.  He explained who and what various statues were in the temple and the museum.  Some of the statues we saw were made in the eighth century!  If we would have been by ourselves, we wouldn’t have been able to read anything and wouldn’t have appreciated this experience nearly as much. 

Three Story Pagoda

This Buddha or Bodhisattva brings the children who have died young up from "hell."
 Parents put the red cloths on the stones to thank him. 

Main Hall

Five Story Pagoda
The second tallest in Japan.

         By the time we finished there, it was time for lunch which we had by the Sarusawa-ike pond.  The pond is pretty nice and you can see the five-story pagoda, which is the second tallest in Japan, from it.  Another reason we ate there was that there were only pigeons and no deer and while I can fend pigeons off my food, I don’t know if I could do the same with deer.  A rather large area of Nara is a park which is inhabited by 1000 deer.  From what we learned at the Wakamiya Jinja Shrine, deer are seen as divine messengers.  All around Nara there are stands/people selling deer crackers.  Usually there are crowds of deer waiting by the cracker stand for someone to buy some crackers and then while they’re paying for them, the deer are already biting at their bags/coats.  The deer are a tourist attraction since apparently they will bow to get a cracker.  We did see some deer bowing, but we also saw a lot of people bowing to deer to get them to bow back.  I was happy that neither Adam nor I wanted to buy crackers, but it was fun watching other people trying to feed the deer and the deer bugging them for more and following them around.  People pet the deer too.  They came right up to us when we weren’t paying attention.  We didn’t pet them.

               

Yup those deer sure can be vicious.

The lady is selling crackers, hence the crowd of deer.

  After lunch, we went to the Wakamiya Jinja Shrine which involved walking through the picturesque Nara park on the way there.  Apparently this shrine is only opened every 20 years and this was the year it was open.  We got a free audio guide and went in.  I don’t think this shrine was anything special.  A couple of the cool things was that it had a lot of lanterns and a 1000 year old tree.

The lanterns start way out here.

Deer are seen as a divine messenger.
While lots of shrines have a dragon at the purification spot, this one had a deer.

The really old tree.

Our last stop of the day was the Todaiji Temple.  This temple is famous for having a giant Buddha (53 feet high) inside and for being the largest wooden structure in the world.  Apparently the building is only 2/3 of the size of the original temple.  This was worth going to see since this Buddha really is big, just the ear is 8 feet long.  We also got to see some really gigantic wooden sculptures/statues.  They were definitely the biggest and most likely oldest wooden statues I’ve seen.  

                

That deer is eyeing me up from crackers.  

This statue is of a guardian of the temple.

The largest wooden structure in the world.

The giant Buddha, although this picture doesn't do it justice.

The lotus leafs around the bottom of the giant Buddha have these pictures on them.

 

After that we spent some more time watching deer and people and ended up going back to the same place that we had lunch to have supper so that we could get away from the deer.

                After supper, we headed back to Todaiji Temple, but to a different area of it (all the temples and Shrines are made up of several different buildings) for a fire ceremony called Omizutori.  It’s some sort of penitential rite.  We got there half an hour early for a five minute ceremony and the place was already packed with people.  This was the last night of Omizutori and they were lighting all the torches at once instead of one at a time.  We ended up having a pretty good spot to see.  At 18:30 they start the drum and then one monk carrying a large torch on a 15 foot pole comes to the top balcony of the temple, 9 other torches follow suit.  It was fun being in a crowd and whenever anything interesting happened with the torches (like them spinning them and sparks flying everywhere) everyone went, “Ohhh…”  Earlier in the day, as our tour guide was explaining how this temple was rebuilt at different times after being burned down, we asked him what caused the temple to burn down, he said lightning and warfare.  I can’t help but wonder if something like this hasn’t contributed as well.

Waiting for it to start.