Kansai Day 4 (23/10/07): Nara

i noticed something over the past few days. Japanese ladies and even some men like to hang a lot of handphone accessories on their phone, even the old ladies do that. and some of the hp accessories are pretty huge. it's not juz the ladies, the guys do that as well.

today our destination was Nara. We changed to Kintetsu Nara line at Namba station. it turned out that it was really easy to go round the main sights of Nara on foot. the main sights were all within walking distance of each other. we passed by the kofukuji (興福寺), saw the Todaiji (東大寺) and entered the Yasuga shrine (春日大社) before we came back to where we started. the deer that belonged to the Nara deer park roamed freely and u can see deer peeking in at shops, entering shops, resting along the road or even crossing the road. the cars actually give way to them (and not horn them out of the way). so i think, deer are king here.

Todaiji is famous for its Great Buddha Hall (大仏殿 Daibutsuden). this is reputedly the largest wooden building in the world and houses a colossal bronze statue of the Buddha Vairocana, known in Japanese simply as the Daibutsu (大仏). i was reading the short description of the temple on the admission ticket. there was one line which read it was a place for peace and prayer but all around me there were screaming kids on school excursion, it was such a paradox. by the way in Japan, the primary kids do not have school uniform, instead they wear different hats. the girls wear hats with a mini ribbon while the boys wear caps. the bunch i saw at the Nara museum wore blue ones while those at the todaiji were wearing bright yellow.

i must comment abt the old pple i see at all these temples and shrines. they were still so fit at their age to be able to walk around the grounds and the Yasuga shrine grounds was not that small. but there were many of them walking steadily, some with walking sticks, some carrying backpacks. i think the singapore old folks would be healthier and happier too if they can engage in such activities but in the first place there were no such places to go to. unless u count bukit timah hill or Mount Faber? but with our sweltering heat, even i will think twice before gg there for a walk.

we went to the Nara museum which was supposedly the number 2 in Japan. there was a permanent exhibition on the buddhist relics and artefacts as well as an exhibition on the bronze artefacts from China. like China Japan has names for all its different periods as well. the buddhist artefacts came mainly from the Asuka Period (7th century), Nara (8th), Heian (9th - 11th) and kamakura period (12th - ??). of course diff periods have their own styles but again, just like in Europe and Taiwan, u can't really decipher the different styles after a while. the onlny fact that i can remember is that the scuptures from the Nara period are characterized by a lacquer wood used so sculptures with a lacquer-like appearance are probably influenced from the Nara period.

we actually wanted to go and see the tombs down at Asuka but we missed the train at Kashiharajingu and the next one would only leave 20 min later. it was all my fault for causing the delay, if not we could have caught the train and might have had time for a quick tour around the tombs before it closed at 5 pm. that's another thing abt trains. it's like our mrt which comes every 5 min usually (anything more than 5 min we still start grumbling), in Japan if u miss it, esp if it is those trains that go to more ulu places, be prepared to wait and because a lot of the sights close at 5 pm, it can be costly to miss a train. also there are diff types of trains such as the rapid express (快速急行), limited express (特急), or local trains (普通), so the next train that comes may be a local train which stops at more stops and will take a much longer time. moral of the story is: catching ur train is the most important, everything else can wait...

sadly we couldn't see the tombs so we returned to our hotel for a shower. there was a passageway at Namba station which has miniature paintings by famous artist, such as Monet, Van Gogh and some others. some of the paintings look quite familiar, i must have seen them before at Van Gogh Museum. anyway these are prob reproduced (it can't possibly be the originals). but i thought it was quite cool to be able to appreciate artwork even at train stations.

we went down to Nipponbashi for a look, but it was quite disappointing cuz a lot of the shops were closed and the street looked half dark. that's one thing i still can't understand. i thought Japan esp Tokyo and Osaka were supposed to be happening but since the first day we seem to be seeing shops closing at 8 or 9 pm, even big dept stores like Takashimaya and Daimaru close at crazy hours like this. or have we been walking in the wrong places all these nights?

tmr we shall tackle the tombs again. this time catching the trains will be the first priority.