Nara - one big Buddha - Where's Welby?

Sunday 28th April 2013

Having got to Kyoto early on Friday we’d managed to fit enough in to give us the chance of a day out in Nara. This large town/small city was the first permanent capital of Japan, and contains a number of impressive sights that were well worth the trip. Another bonus is that most of the things-to-see are located within walking distance, so we spent the day following the Lonely Planet’s suggested walking tour.

We caught a train from Kyoto station and arrived at Nara around 45-50 minutes later (another great reason to invest in a JR pass). The first thing to strike us was the sheer number of people that had headed out to Nara that day. We weren’t too surprised however, as it was a Sunday at the start of Golden Week (a major Japanese holiday). We got away from the crowds by heading first to Isuien gardens. These stunning gardens are well worth the ¥650/4.50GBP entrance fee – the most we’ve forked out for an attraction so far – and are perfectly situated against a backdrop of three mountains.

After Isuien, we visited the gardens next door (Yoshiki-en), which are free to foreign visitors (you just have to fill out a quick form) but aren’t nearly as pretty. We then continued following the LP guide around Nara-Koen – the large park which encompasses most of the major sites and sits on a gently sloping hillside.

The Todai-ji temple, which houses the Great Buddha, is the main reason people visit Nara but we found one of the highlights to be the incredibly realistic Nio guardians made of wood standing inside the gateway en route to the temple.

The buddha is housed in an enormous hall and is flanked by two buddha buddys, which look small by comparison but are massive in their own right. To the back right-hand side of the hall is a small passageway in one of the wooden columns, which is said to be the same size as one of the Great Buddhas nostrils. Families with small children will queue for up to an hour to photograph their kids crawling through, as those who can squeeze through are supposedly ensured of enlightenment.

We spent the rest of the day following the walking tour around the park, which was a lovely way to spend a wonderfully warm spring day – which felt more like the height of summer to us pale and pasty Brits! Whilst there were a number of other shrines and temples that we could also have visited, we felt that most appeared similar, and as all charge admission its only really worth paying for the special ones if we want to keep to our budget!

With slightly sunburned shoulders we headed back to the JR Nara station to get a train back to Kyoto. We then took the subway to Shijo in search of Kane-yo, an LP recommendation specialising in unagi (eel), which neither of us had ever eaten. We found the street but then spent 10 minutes walking up and down it trying to work out behind which Japanese writing it was (as it no longer looked like its LP description). In the end 3 obliging Japanese people pointed the way with typical politeness (most notable was the woman touting loudly for a fast-food joint who happily pointed out that her competitor next door was the one we were after).

Once inside we were shown to a table at the back with a view of their indoor waterfall and pond filled with languid carp and then handed a menu. Thankfully it was in English but seemed to be a limited selection of what was available. It was also more expensive than we’d expected so we opted for a couple of cheaper dishes, both of which were delicious. I also decided to try some sake, which has a much smoother taste than white wine, but a noticeably stronger alcohol content!

After paying, we wandered around some more, before deciding that we could probably do with a bit more food, so we found a nearby Mos Burger – the Japanese equivalent of McDonalds. We ordered a couple of cheeseburgers, topped with a mystery sauce – whatever it was (and it seemed to be a meat-less bolognese sauce) it was good!

By now, we were ready to call it a night, so we caught a bus back to Kyoto station then wandered through the station in search of a take away waffle stand that I was sure I had seen at some point. We never found the waffle stand, but we did find another food court that we had somehow missed, despite spending at least 6 hours inside the station complex already – it really is a labyrinth!

All our pictures are on Flickr but here are the ones we took during our day in Nara – as you can see we had absolutely glorious weather 🙂