Nara

Today my two destinations were Nara and the Buddhist temples in nearby Horyuji.  I left early in the morning from Kyoto and took the train to Nara.  From Nara, I connected to a train to Horyuji, my first destination. There was an excellent TI office in the Horyuji station that provided me with detailed directions on how to get to the temple complex.  It was about a 20 minute walk to the complex (or I could have taken a bus if it were not that it doesn't start running until 10am). 

The first building in the Horyuji temple complex was built by Crown Prince Shotoku in 607 AD.  This was the first grand scale Buddhist temple in Japan and it's considered the start (and Shotoku the founder) of Buddhism in the country.  This is a very special place for Japanese and as a result is an obligatory stop for school kids traveling the country.  Shortly after I arrived to Horyuji, the peaceful and meditation-inducing Buddhist environment was taken over by armies of color coordinated kids.  These kids were fast inside the museum, but slow between them, so I keep being passed and then passing the yellow-cap.  Even when I tried to be really slow so I didn't catch up with them, the result was that I would just encounter the white-cap kids.

Still Horyuji is a very special place with history around every corner.  In fact the place has the highest concentration of National Treasures of any place in Japan (and it has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site).  Most building don't allow photography inside, so I have to be content with photographing the outside of them.   After a couple of hours in Horyuji, I went to the adjacent Chugu-Ji Temple

The Chugu-Ji Temple main attraction is a statue of Buddha in a meditation position with a half crossed leg which is a very rare position for Buddha. The statue is very beautiful with fine features and many details.  Remarkable for a statue that was cast about 1300 years ago. The temple also has the remains of a drapery mandala which was woven to mourn the death of Crown Prince Shotoku.  Unfortunately, most of the mandala is lost except for what was restored about 700 years ago when a nun cut what was left of the mandala and sown the panels into a canvass.  To be honest, these two treasures are beautiful, but they are not worth the steep price charged to enter this temple (500 Yens), so I'd recommend skipping it.

 From the temple, I walked back to the train station and went back to Nara.  Nara is an old capital of Japan (710-784) and it's about to celebrate its 1300 year anniversary in 2010.  The mascot for this event is a weird combination of three tourist attraction of the place: a young Crown Prince Shotoku, with the ears and dressing of Buddha and the antlers of a deer (I'll explain the reason for all this below).

All main attractions in Nara are at Nara Park, so I headed there.  The first temple I found was Kohfukuji Temple which is preceded by a Shinto Shrine.  As part of the shrine, there was a statue of Crown Prince Shotoku.  He is commonly represented as a young boy with Buddha characteristics (such as the third eye).   The temple has many buildings, including two octagonal halls (Southern one in the picture below) and several other halls.  One of the most impressive ones is the Eastern Golden Hall. The temple contains several impressive statues and before I found out that photography was not allowed there either, I took a picture of one of the four Deva Kings.  The status are placed at the corner of a large Buddha and represent the guardians of the faith and protectors of the building, warding off malicious spirits.

An attraction of Nara park are the herds of deer that roam freely.  They are considered Heavenly Messengers so people are not allowed to hurt them.  The legend goes that the mythological god Takemikazuchi arrived in Nara on a white deer to guard the newly built capital.  Today's deer are considered the descendent of that white deer so they can't be hurt.  The deer are very very friendly and very used to people.  In fact, "deer cookies" are sold in many places which deer love to eat.  An interesting behavior that Japanese tourists love is that some deer have learned to "bow" when begging for food.  A behavior reinforced by tourist who bow back and give deer cookies to those deer. The deer also love to eat paper as one poor school girl found out when a deer started eating her notebook (I can see the face of her teacher when she tells her that the deer ate her homework). 

I bought some food from a street vendor and had a nice picnic in the park.  There are two small annoyances when picnicking in Japan.  First there are very few benches in Japanese parks, and second, there are absolutely no garbage cans (you are supposed to take your trash with you).

After lunch, I walked to Todai-ji.  This temple is huge. It was originally build in 752 A.D., but has been destroyed by fire and earthquakes, and rebuilt numerous times. The great hall claims to be the largest wooden structure in the world (by height).  As I entered the temple, three Japanese girls approached me and asked if they could guide me through the temple as an opportunity to practice their English.  Accepting this kind of proposal is Ok in Japan as, different than in other Asian countries, it is usually genuine.  To my surprise they had their whole speech scripted and they were just reading from their notes.  Beyond pointing out some mispronounced words, I wasn't of much help, so I started working on getting them off the script.  I was successful at times (they keep coming back to it) but they seem not to mind me doing that.  In fact one of them liked the idea.

The hall in the temple is dominated by a huge bronze Buddha.  It's so large that 20 people could stand on his left hand.  The body of the Buddha is original, but the head is a replacement after the original one fell down and got severely damaged during an earthquake.   Flanking the Buddha there are two huge carved statues of his protectors.

A fun thing in the temple is a hole in one of the columns.  It's believed that if one can squish through the hole, then one will go to heaven.  The same yellow-cap kids that I found earlier in the day were there and there was a long line of them waiting to go through the hole (something a lot easier for a kid to do than an adult).  They were very supporting, clapping and cheering to each one that succeeded and pushing and pulling on the "fatter" ones so they could get through.

I then went to the Kasuga Taisha Shrine.  It's in the far corner of the park, but it's well worth a visit.  The distinguish feature of the shrine are the 3,000 lanterns that adorn it. The lanterns are everywhere, along the path, hanging from trees, hanging from columns, etc.  They were amazing despite being turned off (they are only lit twice a year in February and August). I can only imagine how they look when they are all on.

 

While at the shrine, I had the good fortune of seeing a dance done by a masked man following the playing of Japanese music.  The dance was done by doing smooth transitions from one pose to another. In a way, it was like dramatizing a poem, rather than dancing.   But I couldn't find out more as it was getting late and I had to catch my train back to Kyoto.

In the way back to the station, there were two loud bakers that were preparing a desert involving flour and green tea.  They would coordinate with each other by shouting, so one will hit the dough with a mallet, the other will move it around get out of the way before the mallet would fall again.  The dough would then go to a high-tech machine that would finish the process by making perfectly round pieces of the dough. 

 

  After this very long day, I was ready to to back to my hotel so I took the express train that took me back to Kyoto (through mostly suburban scenery) in just under one hour.  After arriving at Kyoto, I toyed with the idea of giving another try to Gion, but instead, I decided to walk to the shopping district.  A nice street with covered sidewalks and tons of stores.  After playing a bit more with electronics, I headed to my ryokan, dinner, and my last traditional Japanese bath of this trip.