A day out in 奈良

Sunday 27 January, 2008 | 8 p.m.

Nara (奈良), some 45 minutes from my apartment on the local train, was the capital of Japan for much of the 8th century — after which Kyoto became the capital for ~1000 years before they decided to switch syllables and move east. Nara’s reputation reached great heights again in the 20th century, when it became a sister city of my (kind of) home (kind of) city Canberra.

I spent the afternoon walking around Nara Park, where I was initially greeted by snow and deer. The snowfall was light and intermittent, and disappeared after a couple of hours; though the deer remained. Every year there is a ceremony to cut off the deer horns to reduce their usefuleness for human gouging.

Nara Park is home to many temples and shrines, the largest of which is Tōdai-ji (東大寺) - reportedly the second largest wooden building in existence. Todai-ji Such scale is necessary to house a gigantic Buddha - one can only assume that the perceived super-powers of a Buddha are somehow proportional to its size. Plenty more photos of shrines and ponds and views from the big hill I climbed, but I’m holding out on uploading them until I redo this site with django…

If you’re in Japan you really should visit Kyoto, and if you’re in Kyoto you really should spend a day in Nara.

Kanji for the day 

* 一 ichi (one)
* 二 ni (two)
* 三 san (three)
* 四 shi (four)
* 五 go (five)
* 六 roku (six)
* 七 shi chi (seven)
* 八 ha chi (eight)
* 九 ku (nine)
* 十 jū (ten) [line over vowel denotes a long vowel, ū as in moon rather than u as in put]
* 百 hya ku (hundred)
* 千 sen (thousand)

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