Nara
This morning we thought we’d spread our spending around a little instead of going to the same bakery again. On the way to Namba JR station, we spotted a holographic cake sign, and Debbie saw a picture of a waffle, so that was a breakfast chosen.
I had a “morningu setto” of coffee, salad and a toasted egg and ham sandwich. Debbie had the waffle she’d set her heart on.
No shinkansen today: we caught the local service to Nara, which took a little over an hour. We had intended to buy bento in Osaka station, but our train was waiting on the platform when we arrived, so we leapt on it.
Our enjoyment of the journey was marred only by the presence of some obnoxious American gaijin. All loud laughs and bared teeth. On our train. Blasted gaijin tourists. For convenience, I will refer to them in future as Beavis and Butthead.
Beavis and Butthead were the only gaijin on our carriage, and we thought perhaps today would involve rubbing shoulders with fewer fellow tourists than yesterday in Kyoto. In Nara, we reached the ticket gate to find a backlog of JR Pass holders, who had probably come off the train from Kyoto (JR pass users can’t use the automated gates). We had no option but to queue behind them.
We left Beavis and Butthead behind: they were pondering some baggage lockers.
We went in search of bento. There was none in the JR station. The shops of Nara seemed to concentrate on traditional sweets (irritating, because the boxes look like bento boxes from a distance). Nara’s other train station came up trumps. Our bento boxes were not as fancy as our Himeji lunches, but they were also even cheaper.
Clutching our food, we walked towards Nara’s park, where its many major shrines and temples are. Deer are all over the place. On the way I drank a bottle of “Qoo” mixed fruit drink; tasty.
We ate them in the pleasant area around Nara museum, watched by sacred deer. If we’d walked on a little more, we’d have found even nicer surroundings, but we weren’t to know that, and we were hungry.
Looking up, we saw Beavis and Butthead sitting on a bench opposite us. Were they watching us eat? They didn’t seem to be doing anything else productive. Do they travel the world finding benches to sit at passively?
As I finished my bento, an aged Japanese man passed and said “Japanese food!”, which I thought was observant. I gave him a cheery smile and said “Hai! Oishi desu” (”it’s delicious”), and that seemed to please him.
We walked onwards to Todai-ji. Apparently this is the largest wooden building in the world, and it contains a 16 metre high bronze buddha. Man, that Buddha’s huge.
(This is the best picture I could get for scale - note the man in the foreground. The Buddha is a few metres behind him. The man moved away before I could use him for more shots.)
Before even entering the building, we saw enormous wooden guardian sculptures in the gateway.
A standard British response to grand ornate buildings is “must be a bugger to dust”. The layer of dust on one wooden figure suggested that the solution here was not to bother.
We walked on to a Shinto shrine, Kasuga-taisha. This took us through some very pleasant recreational park, which the locals were enjoying. Getting closer to the shrine, the concentration of Japanese schoolchildren and gaijin tourists increased.
On either side of the path were thousands of stone lanterns. Twice a year, this are lit for festivals. The lantern openings were pasted over for unknown purposes.
Through the shrine gate, pausing to read from the guidebook, we were passed by Beavis and Butthead, who were swigging from cans of Asahi. Now, I have no idea whether Shinto worshippers would be offended by foreigners coming to their shrine drinking vending machine beer, but it seems a good idea to err on the side of caution.
We climbed the steps towards the shrine, and soon Beavis and Butthead passed us again, walking in the opposite direction. We didn’t see them again.
We did the washing hands, bowing, clapping, wishing and coin donating dance at the shrine, then returned to the railway station, past innumerable tat treasure shops.
Video arcades are useful for their toilets. Debbie’s needs gave me an excuse to play House of the Dead 4 (more of the same really — but if a zombie grabs you, shake the gun to free yourself), and we both played a toy themed rhythm-action game.
We fluked a faster train home than we’d used on the way, and were soon enjoying yakuta hour.
For dinner, we walked a short way to Doutonbori-dori, and ate okonomiyaki at a restaurant named Chibo. This is a bit like a Spanish Omelette (but since Debbie doesn’t like eggs, we must maintain the pretence that it’s closer to a pancake). Debbie chose one with beef, and I had one with various seafoods. Our okonomiyaki were delivered to the hotplate built into our table. Apparently in some restaurants, you are presented with a bowl of batter and your raw fillings, to cook yourself. Our were ready to eat when we got them.
This was very nice. We agreed that although it’s not the greatest Japanese dish we’ve tried, it’s the one that’s the least of an acquired taste. I can’t see that anyone wouldn’t enjoy it.
We tried some more elaborate penny falls games on the way home. The ones we fed money into this time were large circular installations with grand moving sculptures in the centre. Players sat around it, each with a view of the centre. The stations were designed to accommodate two players, so we were able to play together. It was fun enough that we changed another 1,000 yen after using up our first set of tokens. It’s lucky we don’t have these at home.