A Trip to Nara
Recently, I got the opportunity to go to Nara with a large group of classmates. It was an awesome time, and it was really nice to get to see a more traditional area as opposed to Kyoto, which is a little more urban. When we first got there, we went into Nara park and fed the deer. They were really cute... until they realized you had food and swarmed you. Then they got a little scary. One of the students was bitten. I wasn't, but one of them did lick me on the arm, and I broke out in hives... I guess I'm allergic to deer. After that, we went to a museum that had a lot of incredibly well preserved artifacts dating back to the Kamakura period! After that, it was lunch time at an udon place that was really yummy. We then hiked up into the mountains to go to Todai-ji and Kasuga-taisha a Buddhist temple and a Shinto shrine. Todai-ji has a, to put it eloquently, ginormous Buddha right in the middle. I could probably have stood in its hand and act like the damsel in distress from King Kong (which would have been awesome, but that's beside the point). Kasuga-taisha was, in a word, gorgeous. According to some research that I did, it's well known for inspiring the architecture of other Shinto shrines. We ended the day with a little bit of shopping, and kakigoori. We had originally planned to stay even longer, but we were unexpectedly exhausted by mid-afternoon. It was difficult to even stay awake for the train ride home! Luckily I was able to sleep in the next day! ^^
