Nara and Osaka

February 2, 2019

This morning Terry (Taiwan Intern), Lorentz (German Intern), Nakano (Japanese Intern), and I went to Nara, Japan. We first took the bus for 10 minutes to the Kizugawadai (I think????) train station. This was my first time on a train, so I am definitely not sure of any of the station names yet. Anyway, we took that train to Nara, which is an extremely beautiful part of Japan. There are many temples and shrines. The temple pictured below is the Todaji Temple and is one of the oldest in Japan. It has been rebuilt several times due to damages from weathering and war. In a temple or shrine in Japan, it is traditional to first rinse your left hand with water, then your right, cup water in one hand and put it in your mouth, spit it out (or swallow if the water is safe), and then rinse off your hands once more. I have no idea why they do that to be honest, but the water was cold and they didn't have any towels to dry your hands off with. There literally are no towels in Japan for drying your hands, and there are no hand dryers either. Apparently, it is custom for you to carry a handkerchief or washcloth to dry your hands off after you are finished in the bathroom. I probably saw 15 or more shrines just in Nara today. Another cool thing was the Nara Deer Park. The deer literally will come up to you and bow to you. There was one or two that bowed to me. You can walk up and pet them, and there are hundreds of them. I think it is because the Japanese consistently feed them, so they just kinda come up to you and expect you to give them a cracker. I pet several of them, but I didn't try feeding them. I was baffled at how close they get to you, they even rub their head on your leg to show they want your food or attention. In Nara, I tried a Japanese dish Sansai Udon, which is basically a soup with thicker white noodles. It was really good! I also saw a Mazda RX7 and a ferrari today, so that was pretty cool considering most Japanese cars are kei cars (weird boxy regulated vehicles, just look it up).

After Nara, we headed to Osaka, which was about another hour by train. We walked around and I figured out that there still is not a lot of vegetarian food, as most things have fish. We kinda just walked around this market place/strip mall, I am not really sure how else to describe it. It is really pretty! We found the Kit Kat store, which apparently is very popular in Japan. I bought strawberry kitkats and a chocolate kitkat topped with dried cranberry bits and crushed almonds (it was actually very good). We ate dinner at another Japanese noodle shop, and I accidentally ate some white fish. It didn't really taste like anything though! After dinner, we just took a few trains back to the dormitory. I have no idea how to work the trains still, but I am sure I will figure it out soon. I still haven't figured out wifi, so pray that I get that settled soon.

Buddha Statue in Todaji Temple, Nara Japan

Sunset in Osaka