Adventures in Japan

I guess they saw their horns off for a reason

Today we all went to Nara, because that seemed like the touristy thing to do. Tyler and I saw more than we did last time, what with us not spending the whole day inside just one museum.


We started at Kofuku-ji, which is a temple with, among other things, a 5-story pagoda. It also had deer (as does almost everything in Nara). We saw one of them almost headbutt a small child. I'm not sure if the kid even noticed. Kinda funny.


Nate bought some deer crackers and maneuvered for a a headbutt of his own. Although from a much smaller, cuter deer. Sissy.


With some careful stepping around hungry deer and their leavings, we made our way to Daibutsu-den. I've been told it's the largest wooden structure in the world, and yup, it's really big. It used to be even more immense, but was destroyed numerous times over the centuries (as tends to happen to a lot of things in Japan) and only rebuilt to about two-thirds the size.


Inside Daibutsu-den is the Daibutsu, or Great Buddha. It may not look it from the picture, but it was huge. Lonely Planet says it's over 16 metres tall. That's over 50 feet. And it weighs something like 437 tonnes. Massive!

And for reasons beyond me, we stopped in a McDonald's on our back to the train station. There was a player grand piano in there. Weird.