Nara is the one-time capital of Japan 1,300 years ago, and is a must-see and visit site for Buddhists. In the initial planning for this trip, I’d scheduled a two day one night stay in this city, but upon finding out about the things to see and do in this city, reduced it to a day trip out of Kyoto. While the city holds a large number of National Heritage sites, many of them are religious buildings that neither Ling and I feel terrifically comfortable visiting.
There were other sites that interested us though; the much-talked about cast of 1,000 tame deer (shika) that roam the wooded park and temple areas freely, and also Isuien Garden. A visit to Nara was thus in order, which we scheduled for Day 5 – Sunday – 26 December.
The city’s accessible by a relatively short 40 minute train ride from Kyoto Station and costs 690円. The train goes to JR Nara Station, and walking eastwards along Sanjodori Street for about 20 minutes will bring one to entrances into Nara Park and the numerous shrines, temples and gardens. Only thing was the weather in Nara was c..o…l…d! By the time we got there at 9:50 AM, the temperature was about 3°C and there was a light mist about. Towards noon too, it started drizzling then followed by light snow fall.
By the time we left the city at 2:45 PM, we checked out five places altogether in the city: Deer Park, Isuien Garden, Neiraku Museum, Yoshikien Garden and Todai-ji temple. I enjoyed the visitations to the two gardens a lot more than the rest; and those two places will be blogged in the next post.
Ling, put your hands in your pockets! feels warmer that way =) wa, snowing… so nice =)
Looking at the illustrations appearing on that sign above, one would think they’re training their deer in expert karate!
I love those pagodas.
Ann; that’s one thing I don’t comprehend – why Ling doesn’t want to wear gloves. I’ve got both hands stuffed inside tight fitting leather gloves, and yet my fingers are freezing!
i also hate wearing gloves… especially when i need to shoot haha
Yeah, wearing gloves and handling photography equipment is always a cumbersome exercise. Here during the winter I wear finglerless gloves under a pair of thick winter gloves when going on shoots; I remove the right-handed winter glove when I need to compose or play with the dials and settings, and then quickly put it back on when I’m done.
It was quite hard initially to take pictures using the D300 wearing leather gloves (it’s even harder for the smaller E-PL1), but with a bit of practice I’ve been able to at least consistently do focusing and shuttle releases. Doing any sort of dial setting though is a lot harder, but I’ve been managing. Fingers are too cold to have them out of the gloves for long.:)