We travelled by three different trains for an hour to get to the center of Nara. As it was the original capital and the birthplace of Japanese Buddhism it is well preserved. A major street that is full of shops from Kimonos to expensive statues took us to the treed park where ancient buildings are preserved.
We made our way with the crowds into the park and saw deer everywhere. Nara promotes the city by encouraging the tourists to see and feed the almost tame deer. It was like a giant petting zoo. Tim took Lucas closer to take photos and Eleanor and I watched from a distance. We saw a woman get butted in the behind and another with her child be swarmed and bumped as their food offerings disappeared. Eleanor and I looked at each other and remembered why we don’t feed the wildlife. The deer were very bold and Eleanor decided she was quite afraid of them. We made our way through the poop, which gave the park a dirty feel, to the museum only to see huge line ups. We kept encountering more and more deer as we went.
We walked along the path to the towering gate of the Todaiji Temple (Great Eastern Temple) one of Japan’s most famous temples. The pillars were enormous and so were the wood carvings of the gatekeepers, usually meant to represent thunder and lightning. Then we walked toward the strong scent of incense calling us to the entrance. After paying to enter we wandered through the gardens happy to be free of the deer to the cleansing spring where we washed away our impurities.
The Temple towered above us with its golden horns pointing to the sky. Todaiji Temple was built in the period 710-794AD for Emperor Shomu. The current building, which is the largest wooden structure in the world, is actually a third generation of the structure built in the Edo period as it burnt down several times. It serves both as a place where one prays for peace and affluence on earth as well as being a center of the Kegon school of Buddhism. It contains the very large Vairocana Buddha which has the meaning ‘Buddha that shines throughout the world like the sun’. The statue is made of gold plated cast bronze and instantly calms you just by beholding it. On either side are golden Bodhisattvas, one of whom was Kannon, the merciful female. We followed the massive crowd around clockwise getting views of the craftsmanship from all angles. We saw a guardian statue which depicted the saying ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’. Lucas has questioned why this is the case ever since. He is pleased to know that his drawings have power but he still likes playing with his swords.
The pillars are massive and are said to be ‘healing pillars’ so if one can crawl through the open space at the base then they are given a place in heaven. The line to do this was so long that we decided to take our chances to reach heaven by other means.
We exited the temple and made our way to shrine that wasn’t so crowded and only had one deer which, we were please to see, was eating grass. Then we wandered through the forest finding very old trees with bases so big that four of us couldn’t wrap our hands around. We informed the children that these would have been cut down to make the massive pillars in the temple and Eleanor said she liked them better in the forest.
We walked a loop back out past the Five-tiered Pagoda and the Three tiered Pagoda along an old stone wall to the main street which took us back to the train station. It was almost dark (4:30) so all the signs were lit up and the smells of food cooking in the restaurants encouraged us to get home for dinner.
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