Nara: destinations and deer

               Nara was very convenient for a traveler like me.  There were a few major landmarks to see and about half of them were in walking distance of where I stayed, while the others were lined up in a way so as to make a train ride quick and easy.  Me and david saw temples, temples, shrines, temples, temples, a park, and the old imperial palace.  Everything in the region was built between the late 600s to the late 700s to my knowledge, so it was interesting to get to see all of the very old buildings.  The shrines and temples were extremely cool to see, with one of the temples being perhaps the oldest in the country, and another having a pagoda that was the second tallest in the country.

                Also, deer!  Unlike deer everywhere else I have seen, nara is known for its deer which while wild are not afraid of people and can often be seen walking or resting around the city and hording around people with deer snacks in the park.  That was really amazing and I think I got a few pictures of me petting some deer and also a video of some guy running away from deer because he didn't expect they would want the deer food he bought as much as he thought.

                There was something slightly disappointing about nara however, and I started to notice following my visit to the old imperial palace.  The palace was surrounded by pretty much nothing, and the building itself is not necessarily a recreation of the original palace, as too little was known about the original which was lost, other than the length and width as measured by information gathered from the grounds.  So the imperial palace building that we had seen was an educated guess at what it may have looked like, using data from the grounds as well as knowledge of architecture style of the time.

                According to some reading that I have done, the historical significance of nara was neglected until the later 1900s in japan, and nara hadn’t been as popular since the capital was moved to kyoto.  I felt there were too little people visiting the temples and shrines in nara, and  I thought that was unfortunate since it was a very interesting and beautiful place to visit.  It just seemed too quiet for such a historically significant city. 

                But because nara was a bit quiet, perhaps me and david stood out a bit more.  And the fact that we stuck out turned out to be one of the coolest parts of visiting nara.  Next post is on my interaction with people in japan!