Avalon

Japan Adventure Part 4-Nara & Koyasan

Monday, August 11, 2008

Day 5 was spent on the move, again. In the morning we travelled to Nara, which was a relatively small, ancient town in my opinion.

One of the many temples that dotted Nara's map.

The deer park. According to Shinto belief, the deer is the messenger of God and here in Nara, the docile creatues are free to roam the parks.

Meet adult Bambi..

It wasn't an easy feat getting the deer to cooperate with the picture taking.

Weizhuang was taking a picture of me having a face-off with the deer when another deer came to snatch some screen time.

It ate our maps! Sadistic Wz suggested feeding them tissue paper after seeing how they relish eating paper.. Tsk tsk..

And another clip entitled: The deer are smart.

The deer looks pissed... Hey I didn't ask you to eat maps for lunch...

Temples of Nara

Temple again. It get's repetitive after a while.

Todaiji 東大寺. We didn't mean to visit this place even though it is like a must-see in Nara after finding out how far it was from the train station. But in the end we still managed to hike to this place.

From Nara, we made our way to Koyasan, which turns out to be further even via train than we thought. Koyasan is located at the outskirts, so the view from the trains was quite a treat. But along the way it is easy to doze off because the trip is just too long. One thing I took back from there is the travelling time in Singapore is really nothing compared to elsewhere.

The train stops at the the station Gokurakubashi. お疲れだ、電車！Because the Nankai lines that lead to Koyasan is not covered by our JR pass, we had to foot an addition 2780 yen to purchase the Koyasan Free Servic pass, which provides with a to-and-fro trip to Gokurabashi, the cable car ride, and unlimited bus rides within the town of Koyasan itself.

The cable car conductor.

Yes the whole cable car was ours. It was actually the size of a normal bus and the car tracks are built slanted up against the mountain.

The scenery from the cable car was not that spectacular, but the looking at the greenery was refreshing.

Koyasan, or Mt Koya, is actually a world of its own. 来到这里，高野山真有几分世外桃源，与世隔绝的感觉。原本以为这个地方只是一座供旅人观光的山区地带，却发现其实这整个地方就是个市镇，光说学校，就有小学到大学，我在想如果这么多年的学习生涯都看着同样几张脸，应该也会有点... ... 而我们就住在这里了：清静心院。这其实是间庙宇，现已开放供旅客体验僧人与世无争的生活。我们还真度过了清静的一宿。

There are temples at every corner. And like the one we stayed at, these are also temple lodgings and tourists can actually choose from 53 historical temples. Each temple is called a shukubo.

This is the one we stayed at. To add on to how relaxed the atmosphere is here, we waited for about 5 mins after ringing the attendant bell and unlike Tokyo or Osaka or any of the big cities where service personnel will rush out to greet you, the lady in charge only came out after a while. We learnt that it was because she was the only person at the help desk. In any case, the good thing about Japanese is they are always able to qwell any discontent by their service and smiles.

Super nice Japanese garden in the shukubo we stayed in.

This pond was beside the bath room. The funny thing is there is actually an allocated bathing time for guests, and the bathing time ends after 9. But the bath room was great and we definitely had a good bath.

Our room. It is standard tatami room.

Exploring around our temporary home.

The town looks very quiet, probably because it is nearing dusk.

Another temple.

And another.

And another..

I love the temple architecture. Even though the whole place is full of them, somehow each temple will have its own aura to it.

Tea. The snacks you see, are actually bought at one of the shops. They only make a few of them each day to guarantee the freshness but it tasted average against aesthetic value.
Our dinner.The full set. The meal was vegetarian but I can assure you, you won't mind being vegetarian for that one time, maybe more, if only there is a chance. I especially like soup, the beans and the tofu.

We rested early in the evening, because we had to attend a morning prayer which commenced at 6am. In any case, it is all about finding inner peace when you choose to stay in a place like this. If given a chance, I might just visit this place again but the next day, we would be heading back to Osaka.

Envoy of the Stars @ 1:10 PM
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