5 Gaijin: Day 8: Kyoto, Nara and Kobe!

This morning Katie woke up with a really bad cold. Rather than trudging around all day in the cold we opted to have her stay home and rest, so the five gaijin are down to four today :( Our first stop was the Toji pagoda. This is the tallest wooden tower in Japan built around the year 796. It stands about 54 meters or 177 feet tall. This is one of the more famous symbols of Kyoto. It is featured on many postcards and local works of art. The entrance fee was kind of pricey so we opted for the free version which included walking around the perimeter and taking photos of what we could see!

Next we headed to the southern end of Kyoto to see the Fushimi Inari Temple

Here we are standing at the main entrance to Fushimi Inari-taisha. This Shinto shrine sits at the base of Mount Inari, and there are trails from here that climb all the way to the top. However, the four gaijin decided that we would not climb up all the way today as we still had other adventures to pursue this afternoon. The Inari temple is the patron of business as well as the Shinto god of rice. This is an important temple to the Japanese people and government. In fact, it is one of the few temples supported by the government. Merchants and manufacturers come from all over to worship here. Each of the thousands of tori or red gates you see here have been donated by a Japanese business. Every year they continue to add new tori as they line the trail all the way to the top of the mountain. The first structure here was built in the year 816, but the main shrine was built in 1499.

Foxes or kitsune are regarded as Inari's messengers and
are found in all Inari shrines (there are over 32,000
Inari sub shrines throughout Japan). One attribute
the foxes have is that they hold the key to the rice
granary in their mouths.

Standing in front of the main building or Honden

The fox holding a bundle of rice in its mouth

Each of the tori has inscripted the name of the business and the year it was donated.
A small gate goes for about $4000 and a large gate upwards of a million dollars!

We're standing in the low budget section - lol

Making our way up the mountain!

Collection of foxes with written wishes/prayers

Taking a break from climbing stairs!

Map of our ascent up the mountain

Yotsutsugi intersection is about halfway up the mountain and has a beautiful view of Kyoto.
This is where the four gaijin decide to head back down the mountain!

A local spider - junior sized according to Sarah

Almost back down the mountain and jumping for joy! Our calves are burning - lol

We now board the train and head south to Nara to find the deer park and Todai-ji. Nara was Japan's first capital city established in the year 710. Once we left the train station we walked down the main road towards the mountains to where the shrines and deer park were located.

The first shrine we walked through was Kofukuji, a shrine that was transferred from
Kyoto to Nara in 710. There used to be over 125 buildings as part of this shrine,
today there areabout a dozen. One of them is the second tallest pagoda in Japan.
(see below)

We found the Sika deer in Nara-koen! Deer are considered by the Shinto religion
to be messengers of the gods.

These deer just walk right up to you waiting to be fed!

There are various vendors in the park area selling

deer crackers or shika senbai - some of the deer

politely bow for their cracker, others are more aggressive

and will chase you down! There was more than one
terrified child running from a deer that afternoon - lol

They ate everything! This was grabbed out of someone's back pocket!

This is the main entrance to Todai-ji or Eastern Great Temple

View of the Daibutsuden or Great Hall where the Vairocana Buddha is housed. It is the world's largest wooden building!

There were so many people here today! It's a Saturday afternoon and there are lots of school groups and tour groups here. Many of the tour groups are Chinese. In fact, quite a few times Sarah would go up to someone and ask them to take our photo and they would tell her they didn't speak Japanese!

Walking into the main hall the Great Buddha towers above you!

According to the records more than 2 million people helped build the Great Buddha and the Hall in which the Buddha is housed. The Buddha was constructed through eight castings over three years. The head and neck were casted separately and were last replaced about four hundred years ago. The statue was originally started in Shigaraki - where Trevor and Katie went yesterday - and continued in Nara. It was completed in 751 and nearly bankrupted Japan using almost all of the country's bronze for its completion. It stands at about 52 feet tall making it the largest bronze structure in Japan today.

The original shrine included two large pagodas on either side of the Great Hall which stood at over 300 feet each. They were destroyed in earthquakes and never rebuilt. The Great Hall has been rebuilt twice, the last time was in 1692 and is only 2/3 of the Hall's original size. The Buddha has also been recast a few times - both its head and hands have needed replacing after various earthquakes or fires.

A large bodhisattva sits next to the Buddha - this is a being who has made a commitment
to enlightenment by taking vows topractice the "six perfections." In Buddhism all are
encouraged to become bodhisattvas and to practice these "six perfections"
of giving, moral discipline, patience, effort, concentration, and wisdom.

One of the guardians of the Great Buddha

We found a willing Japanese tourist to take our photo! It took a few tries, but this picture turned out great!

Bruce having fun with one of the deer

Walking by the pagoda at night on the way back to the train station to head to Kobe.

One of the best surprises of the day was running into Womack shimai and her parents
at the Kobe train station. Her parents had come to pick her up today and they were on
their way out of Kobe as we arrived. We literally grabbed this photo as the
train doors were shutting!

The Kobe Illuminari is a lightshow donated by the Italians after the Kobe earthquake in 1995. As we walked down the streets of downtown Kobe beautiful Italian Christmas music was playing.