The Deer of Nara
Part of Four Days in London: A memoir about trying to find a way to the Olympics, and finding something else instead. This set of stories take place in March 2010.
Upon getting back to Sawano’s dorm room from Budo University I went straight to work. We were late getting back and I had a train to catch in Tokyo. I snatched up some clothes that looked almost clean and crammed into my backpack. After exchanging small talk with Sawano I made my way to the Tsukuba train station. I needed to get to Shibuya.
I love Tokyo. I can genuinely say that of all the places I have been fortunate enough to travel, Tokyo is my favorite. For close to two months Tokyo was a short train ride away. In a way I had always figured I had time to see the rest of Japan, but now entering into the last few days of my trip I realized how much more there was for me still to see. It is easy to get caught thinking of Japan as a small place. It is after all a series of islands, but if you were to super impose on top of the United States you would realize that the four main islands were nearly as long as one of the American coasts.
Despite my best efforts I arrived too late to Shibuya station to hop on the late night train to Kyoto. After reflecting on this for a moment I didn’t really have a big problem with this. It was still early enough to justify finding a place to stay, and navigating an unknown city late at night would have been hard. By now I knew Tokyo. I bought my round trip tickets to leave on the first train out Saturday morning and come back monday. The next morning I was on the famous bullet train out to Kyoto, the Shinkansen.
While on the train I read about the areas and compiled my list of places to see. Kyoto is the old capital of Japan. Unlike Tokyo it was spared American fire bombing on account of its cultural significance. Since the trip I typically advise those traveling to Japan to make it out there. If you are at all interested in what I refer to as “old Japan”, that is pre Meiji era, Kyoto is a great place to go.At the top was the International Manga museum in Kyoto. My plan however was to first go to Nara. I dropped my stuff off at the hotel I was staying at in Kyoto, and then hopped back onto a smaller train to head over to Nara.
Nara, like Kyoto, is also a former capital. Nowadays Nara is something of a two note town, but that doesn’t mean it should be skipped. It’s known for its temples and deer. The temples house amazing bronze buddha statues. The monks had hundreds of years ago begun feeding the local deer. Today the deer will walk right up to you and you can feed them. Effectively it combines the best parts of visiting a beautiful buddhist temple with a petting zoo. The quality of the pictures is mixed, but they hold some good memories.
At the end of the day I loaded myself back on the train to go back to Kyoto.
