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Nara: Deer, terrapins, temples and railway adventures - Part 1

Nara is the site of Japan’s first Imperial Palace. That makes it one of Japan’s oldest city — dating back to the 8th Century.

Our reason for traveling there, however, was more about cute four-legged furry animals than seeing the palace. Nara has a huge population of tame deer. We wanted to see them. 

I’m standing maybe 10 feet away.

Once you get out of downtown they’re all over the place. And they are pretty approachable. Actually, if they thing you have food for them, they approach you. We booked a bike tour in Nara. 

Quick rewind — we started the Nara visit by taking the Kintetsu Limited Express from Kyoto to Nara. We took the Limited Express from Kyoto to Yamato Saidaiji (two stops) and then the local from there to Nara (two more stops). There was a moment of panic as I thought I had lost one of the Limited Express tickets. This ticket gets you an assigned seat on the train. A hasty trip to the ticket office. Paid for the ticket. Got out of the office, on the train and found the ticket. Whoops.

To the uninitiated, Japan is the train capital of the world. Most trains run on what Americans call narrow gauge track. That’s a different post on this blog. The Japan National Railway was the public corporation that rebuilt the railroads after World War II. That corporation was disbanded in 1987 and the railroad was broken into a handful of regional private operators - JR East, JR Central, JR West, JR Kyushu, etc. Kyoto is in the JR West region. 

There were always other private railway operators, however. The Kintetsu is one of those private companies, operating in central Japan. Some of the major cities it serves include: Kobe, Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya, Nara and Yoshino.

The Kintetsu Limited Express

Interior of the Kintetsu Limited Express. Cool, old-style cloth seats.

The colorful local that took us to Nara from the transfer point at Yamato Saidaiji. 

Anyway, we get on the train, make it to Yamato Saidaiji, cross the platform to take the local and arrive safely at Nara. That was the easy part. Then we have to figure out how to get to the starting point for the bike tour — which is more than 2 kilometers outside of town in a residential district. I’m having problems navigating on Google maps (transit) mode. Got so flustered that we just took a taxi.  

We met our guide Elodie. She’s an ex-pat from France. She gives us some nice Trek bikes (sized in metric; I’m about 1.9 meters tall) and helmets and off we go. By the way, its warm and humid at 10 am local time. Still the bike was the way to go. 

First stop was a beautiful pond southeast of Nara, Ukimido.


It was amazingly idyllic. What you can’t see in the photo is the blossoming cherry trees. The trees are on the left, but cherry blossom season comes in March. This is a favorite location for newlyweds and engaged couples to come for photos. 

The was the location of our first deer sighting and another favorite in the pond, turtles. Go Terps!!!

My fellow Terps — representing in Japan

We took a stroll onto the bridge on the pond and the veranda. This was the scene from that. The structure in the background is a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn. We’re scheduled to stay at one at the end of the week. 


We pushed on to the Todaiji Temple in Nara. This is the main gate built entirely of wood. 



Then on to the temple itself. Japan is dotted with temples and shrines. The temples are Buddhist. The shrines are Shinto. This temple dates back to 752. It has a huge Budda inside. The current temple is about 30% smaller than the original. The original was destroyed by fire. 





This is a scale model of the original temple. It included two pagodas flanking the main structure. Those are gone.

That’s it for this installment. Next up - feeding Nara’s deer, visiting a shrine and taking the train home.

Sayonara.

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