Day 8 - Wednesday November 1, 2017 - Nara

Nara

Posted on Wednesday November 1, 2017

Today we’re off to Nara, about 45 minutes south of Kyoto, the main attraction being Todai-ji, the Denbatsu-den and the Big Buddha (and the deer), all of which are in Nara-koen park.

We’ve been to Nara several times and it’s always a pleasant day out. Previously, we’ve always taken the Kintetsu line train because Kintetsu-Nara station is closer to the park than the separate JR Nara station. However, as we’d have to pay for the Kintetsu train but the JR train is free using our JR passes, JR it is.

We were on the platform in good time, so having picked a spot, were ready when the train arrived. Despite the woman behind A-M trying to do an end run around her as soon as the doors opened, we made it on ok and quickly plonked ourselves down in a couple of seats – just as well as it was soon standing room only.

After arriving in Nara, we stopped for coffee and then headed east towards the park. We took the back streets through Naramachi, the older, more traditional part of town. There are a couple of gardens near the park – Yoshiki-en and Isui-en – that get good reviews and which we haven’t been to before, so we decided to head there first.

Yoshiki-en

Isui-en

There were a lot of people around and a lot of buses so we started wondering whether today is a public holiday. (It’s not but this Friday November 3 is – ‘Culture Day’). There were hordes of people heading towards Todai-ji so, after visiting the gardens, we decided instead to go in search of a ‘tea house’ that A-M had found online, supposedly somewhere over to the east of the park. It took us a while to figure out where it was but we set off, perhaps more in hope than expectation. However, we managed to find it though it was a bit of a walk and by now it was getting fairly hot. We had a nice lunch – vegetable tempura and udon noodles and then headed back. We decided to forego Todai-ji and the Big Buddha (and the crowds) as we’ve been there several times before so made our way back to the station to get the train home. We took the JR train again back to Kyoto, which meant a somewhat longer walk to get to the JR station, rather than the closer Kintetsu line station. When we got there, it was close to train time so, rather than rush, we stopped for coffee and caught the next train, 30 minutes later.

Off to Lunch

Back in Kyoto, we stopped in the ticket office (which has an ‘English spoken’ section) to make some seat reservations for tomorrow (to Okayama), for Monday (to Himeji) and for Tuesday, when we move on to Kanazawa. Although there was a bit of a line, they are very organized – one of the English-speaking ladies comes to ask what you need and – if you’ve done your homework and taken screenshots of the trains you want – you just go through it with her, she scribbles it down in Japanese on a bit of paper and then, when you get to the counter, you just hand it over and a couple of minutes later you have all your seat reservations. Simples!

I’m not sure we’ll be going out for dinner. It was a lot warmer today than the forecast would suggest, so we’re both feeling the effects and, after a glass of wine, inertia is setting in …. though I may be dispatched to the supermarket to see what I can find….