deer town

Saturday, 5 July 2008
17h28

After a long day of sightseeing and walking for hours and hours in the sun, nothing makes me feel better than a large McDonald's coke. I've been doing this since my backpacking days in Europe 13 years ago, and I still enjoy it just as much. The only difference is that now there's coke zero! After all, one has to somehow watch all those calories after so many Oreos, no? :)

Nara is such a magical place -- even in the hot and humid summer. A lot of the main temples and major sights are downtown in the middle of a huge park, Nara Park. The place is full of deer that love to be fed, petted, and photographed... and they like to play with the little children. It's realy funny to see a bunch of them following someone who's bought some popular cookie-like thingies they sell around here and, if you don't feed them, they gently push you with their horns and nibble on your shirt!

The temples here are just fantastic. My favorite one is Todai-ji, which features an impressive 15-meter tall statue of a sitting Buddha inside a massive building. At the main gate, there are two equally massive statues of some guardians or protectors of the temple, and across the beautifully-manicured garden, you can see the temple. A really cool thing, which I only noticed on my way out upon looking at a postcard in the souvenir shop, is that there's a big window above that is (I think) only opened during some festival, when the whole Buddha sculpture is lit at night and a bunch of Japanese lanterns are set along the path that leads from the main gate to the temple. Thus, from the distance you can see the building and the illuminated head of the Buddha peeking through the window. I wish I could see this live.