Nara

So back on February 4th I went to Nara for the day and completely forgot to blog about it! I remembered just now after pointing people to Nara for lanterns and wood buildings in my sight seeing guide.

Nara has a lot of deer.
They are everywhere and are free to go where they please. Very tame and kind of mangy. I went for the lantern festival at Kasuga Shrine, but got there early so I could explore a bit. I went by Kofuku Temple to see the pagoda and Todai-ji in the park for the giant Buddha. They're not lying, it's big, and it's housed in the largest wooden structure on earth. The temple is now only one third of its original size due to fire damage in the 12th and 16th centuries. Deeper into the park I followed a crowd of people to a shrine where a priest was giving a sermon from a second story balcony. With the strike of a bell the priest started throwing colored balls at the crowd below. Odd. I got to Kasuga early so I wandered back towards towards town. there were so many lanterns, it was nice to see them all before it got dark. At dusk I headed back to the shrine.



It was majestic to see all the lanterns glowing, over 3000, but it was crowded. There was an amazing lack of street vendors at this festival, so I was hungry. On the way back to the station I went by Kofuku again and caught a surprise demon show. Neat.