Day 6 - Tuesday April 25, 2017 - Nara

We took the train to Nara and walked to the park to feed the deer and to visit Todai-ji and the Daibutsu, the Great Buddha. The park is home to thousands of deer; you buy a pack of 20 wafers for ¥150 from one of the many sellers, and feed them to the deer (including feeding them the wrapper – they eat anything). The deer are not aggressive but they do know when you’ve got something so will nudge you, follow you, try to get in to your pocket etc. They’re Japanese deer so they have learnt to bow and will stand there bowing at you.

Todai-ji was very crowded, far more so than the last time we were here with lots and lots of school kids and numerous tourists. Next week is Golden Week so it will probably be standing room only.

We took the train back to Kyoto Station and went to one of the restaurants on the 11th floor for lunch. We’ve been to this one before on our previous visits – good tempura and soba noodles and slightly more up-market than the get-your-ticket-at-the-machine places we usually go.

After lunch, we took the train to Inari, to go and see the Torii gates at Fushimi-inari. Hundreds of gates, stretching all the way up the mountain and back again. We only walked part way, as it was very crowded again (and will probably be horrendous during Golden Week).

For dinner, we went to the get-your-ticket-from-the-machine place a few doors from the hotel. This one rather flummoxed us at first (well, me at least) as there was no ‘English’ button. Normally, the first thing you do is look for that button (and on the ticket machines in the train station). Fortunately, the waitress came rushing over with an English menu so we could check what we thought we were ordering – Tonkatsu. These ‘set’ meals usually come with rice, pickles, miso soup etc. – not bad for, in this case, ¥680 (A$8 / US$6 / £4.75) each.