Japan, Day 7
Saturday we went to a petting zoo Nara and the Golden Silver Temple.
Our first stop of the day was Nara, a city famous for deer and shrines. As I mentioned previously, people in Japan don't have the compunction against feeding animals, and the deer in Nara have taken advantage of this. They were all pretty short, maybe waist high, and were all over the place. Every so often we'd pass a vendor selling deer crackers for 150 yen, which helped explain why they had no problem following people around, nosing them for food. At one point B decided she wanted some soft serve ice cream, and E had to use his umbrella to shield them from a deer while they ate it.
Nara deer also have no problem if you want to pet them. However, deer fur is much more prickly than you might think; they're not very pettable.
We went around the park in Nara, stopping at a few of the temples. The one that sticks out most in my memory is Todai-ji, both for the building and for the contents. According to Wikipedia, the current building was completed in 1709, was the largest wooden building in the world until 1998, and is actually 30% smaller than the previous one. The statues were also impressively huge, even by modern standards - and these were constructed hundreds of years ago.
There's a pillar in Todai-ji with a hole in the base said to grant enlightenment in the next life to those who pass through it. There was a line of people waiting to try it; some failed, some succeeded. I got through fine, though I was a little ungraceful trying to find things to push against. E was next, and did OK too; B had already done it on a previous trip. Travel tip of the day: Fit through small squareish spaces by raising your hands over your head, leading with them, angling your body to fit along the diagonal, and using your feet to push.
After we finished with Nara, we returned to Kyoto and hopped on the bus to the Golden Temple, or Kinkakuji. We got to the temple, but were very confused because the signage said it was the Silver Temple. It took us a minute or so to realize we had accidentally gotten off at the wrong stop - instead of Kinkakuji, we were at Ginkakuji.
Oh well, a temple's a temple, right? Might as well see it while we were there. Unlike the Golden Temple, the Silver Temple is metallic in name only. It turned out to be a Zen garden-ish place, with a nice sand garden, pond, and forest. We didn't have time to make it to Kinkakuji before it closed, so called it a day.
ATMs in Japan, at least the international ones we used, have the drawback of dispensing money in 10,000 yen increments, or about $125. With only about a day left, how much money should we budget to have left? Having too much money was a waste, because we'd have to change it back, but not having enough money would be even worse. I had about 5,000 yen, which I estimated might last me the rest of the trip if I was careful, but it would be close. In the end, I decided to play it safe and withdraw money one more time. More importantly, I'd have money to go manga shopping.
Elated at my success the previous day in finding manga, I had spent some time in the morning coming up with even more titles to look out for. Unfortunately, I had much less luck than on Friday. Either I was looking in the wrong area (entirely possible) or the first place I tried no longer existed. The second one didn't seem like it had any clerks I could pull my "can you please look up this list" on, and so I finally went back to the store I had gone to the previous day. Not the worst thing, as I had a new list of manga. The clerk had to look things up for a while (probably getting the authors), then checked all the shelves, but he could only find one series (which I had also stumbled across while waiting) and part of another; no luck with the rest.
Additional manga volumes acquired: 15
Our first stop of the day was Nara, a city famous for deer and shrines. As I mentioned previously, people in Japan don't have the compunction against feeding animals, and the deer in Nara have taken advantage of this. They were all pretty short, maybe waist high, and were all over the place. Every so often we'd pass a vendor selling deer crackers for 150 yen, which helped explain why they had no problem following people around, nosing them for food. At one point B decided she wanted some soft serve ice cream, and E had to use his umbrella to shield them from a deer while they ate it.
Nara deer also have no problem if you want to pet them. However, deer fur is much more prickly than you might think; they're not very pettable.
We went around the park in Nara, stopping at a few of the temples. The one that sticks out most in my memory is Todai-ji, both for the building and for the contents. According to Wikipedia, the current building was completed in 1709, was the largest wooden building in the world until 1998, and is actually 30% smaller than the previous one. The statues were also impressively huge, even by modern standards - and these were constructed hundreds of years ago.
There's a pillar in Todai-ji with a hole in the base said to grant enlightenment in the next life to those who pass through it. There was a line of people waiting to try it; some failed, some succeeded. I got through fine, though I was a little ungraceful trying to find things to push against. E was next, and did OK too; B had already done it on a previous trip. Travel tip of the day: Fit through small squareish spaces by raising your hands over your head, leading with them, angling your body to fit along the diagonal, and using your feet to push.
After we finished with Nara, we returned to Kyoto and hopped on the bus to the Golden Temple, or Kinkakuji. We got to the temple, but were very confused because the signage said it was the Silver Temple. It took us a minute or so to realize we had accidentally gotten off at the wrong stop - instead of Kinkakuji, we were at Ginkakuji.
Oh well, a temple's a temple, right? Might as well see it while we were there. Unlike the Golden Temple, the Silver Temple is metallic in name only. It turned out to be a Zen garden-ish place, with a nice sand garden, pond, and forest. We didn't have time to make it to Kinkakuji before it closed, so called it a day.
ATMs in Japan, at least the international ones we used, have the drawback of dispensing money in 10,000 yen increments, or about $125. With only about a day left, how much money should we budget to have left? Having too much money was a waste, because we'd have to change it back, but not having enough money would be even worse. I had about 5,000 yen, which I estimated might last me the rest of the trip if I was careful, but it would be close. In the end, I decided to play it safe and withdraw money one more time. More importantly, I'd have money to go manga shopping.
Elated at my success the previous day in finding manga, I had spent some time in the morning coming up with even more titles to look out for. Unfortunately, I had much less luck than on Friday. Either I was looking in the wrong area (entirely possible) or the first place I tried no longer existed. The second one didn't seem like it had any clerks I could pull my "can you please look up this list" on, and so I finally went back to the store I had gone to the previous day. Not the worst thing, as I had a new list of manga. The clerk had to look things up for a while (probably getting the authors), then checked all the shelves, but he could only find one series (which I had also stumbled across while waiting) and part of another; no luck with the rest.
Additional manga volumes acquired: 15