Japan Part 2

The jet lag the first few days had us either wanting to sleep at inopportune moments or not sleeping at all! But hey, you had to just keep going because there was just so much to see and do.

From Kyoto we took a day trip to Nara, the ancient capital of Japan between 710 and 784, home to eight temples and shrines which form the Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The train journey took about 50 minutes from Kyoto on a local train (our first trip on the Shinkansen (bullet train) would have to wait for another day. We discovered on that journey what Japanese people do when they get on trains, in fact, they seem to be able to do it just about anywhere.....

We were so lucky with the weather in Nara (indeed our whole trip), the sun was shining and the sky was blue....and it felt warm.... we had seen cherry blossom in Kyoto but the weeping cherry tree we saw in Nara was something else....

Todai-ji Temple - the Todai-ji Temple's Great Buddha Hall is the largest wooden building in the world, housing the world's largest statue of Buddha at almost 15m tall! It was rebuilt in 1709 and is 57m long and 50m wide it's 30% smaller than its predecessor!   The entrance to the temple complex is through the Nandaimon, the Great South Gate which is also a massive structure. But nothing compares to the hall itself.....

We then wandered through the park (full of tame deer, the messengers of the gods) to the Kasuga Shrine,  a Shinto shrine within the park. In Shintoism renewal is key and this meant in the past that shrines were rebuilt every 20 years. The Kasuga Shrine was last rebuilt in 1853 but prior to that had been rebuilt approximately 50 times. The shrine is famous for its lanterns, whether they are the stone lanterns that line the walkway to the shrine of the brass and copper lanterns in the shrine itself.