Striking out on our own in Kyoto

On our last day of touring we were taken to Nara, which is a town with a gorgeous Buddhist temple – Todai-Ji Temple. This building is from 1692.

Contained inside is one massive Buddha:

It’s all gorgeous, but I don’t think my troops cared anymore, generally. As you approach the temple, you need to walk through part of the Deer Park of Nara and that is what grabbed the attention of the young people in our group. Nara swarms (accurate descriptive verb award for me) with deer. There are thousands of them roaming around. Here’s one that Mikey decided to feed, which ate happily and then bit her when the food ran out.

This guy below is supposed to cure all of your ailments. You’re supposed to rub all the areas on his body that correspond to the injured areas on your body. Then, without touching anything else, you’re supposed to immediately touch all your injured areas. And VOILA, you’re supposed to be cured. But I still reached for my Tylenol this morning so I cannot vouch for him.

We also stopped by Fushimi Inari shrine. There’s some information to be gleaned about good luck in relation to all these orange pillars, but I had turned off my Whisper hearing device due to shrine information overload and so I cannot tell you more than that.

We finished off our Gate One tour with (one more!) special Japanese meal, this time with a Maiko dancer. I scored the highlight meal of my trip. Everyone else was presented with a variety of things that included these items below. Cooper is showing off some raw-looking beef that was apparently actually cooked. Down below that is something we asked Shizu about and we were informed that it is the skin scraped off the top of gelatinized soy milk. The Japanese must think long and hard about what kind of things they can creatively make food out of. I myself, healthy vegetarian type, was presented with a plate of French fries, some edamame and a bowl of rice, precipitating a lot of food envy from the surrounding tables.

Ron coped with his food disappointment by having a few drinks, and then tried to stand up to make a toast to the whole group of 22. Grace and I were falling apart trying to stop him, for if you know Ron, you know that it’s impossible to predict what he’ll say when he’s toasting. (HEFCOC?)

I’ll leave you with this photo from one of the shopping streets of Nara. There is stuff hanging everywhere due to the recent Star Festival, which celebrates the meeting of some deities who were lovers and were separated.

We’ve got three days left in Japan and we’re doing all non-shrine things: Railway Museum, aquarium and a few others I’ll fill you in about later.