After a couple weeks of roaming around Japan, The group decided to head over to Nara for a field trip today. The first thing to do was to wake up and get ready to go to Nara. I got up at 7 am and left at about 8:45 am to go to McDonald's for breakfast. I had a McMuffin as it was quick and good to eat. It tied me over for a while until we headed to the Midosuji line.
The train ride to Nara involved the JR Express line. THis train skipped a lot of the stations and was significantly faster than the local train. I personally talked with some of the other group members about Godzilla and some of the older goofy movies. Looking out the window while my music was playing, I saw that the countryside of Japan was full of rice patties. This was interesting to me because it was green and lush compared to the gray concrete of Osaka. There were less people and it seemed more peaceful. Then, we went through the mountains which were full of trees and more trees. It was beautiful. I wish I could have seen the forest and walked through it.
After the train ride, we arrived in Nara. Nara felt like most of the other cities at first. As we went on, I noticed something fluffy and adorable. These were the famous Nara deer. These fluffy annoyances were everywhere. They were so acclimated to humans that I went up to a couple and pet them like a dog. They particularly liked to be pet on the head as they would tilt it up when you scratched it. Some of my friends even took selfies of them with their arms wrapped around the deer. I noticed though that the deer really just wanted to be fed. You could buy cookies and feed the deer. Once you fed them, they would start biting your shirt and they wanted more cookies from you. So, I did not feed them as I wanted to keep my shirt. All of this was interesting and made me want to stay in Nara.
After the deer-infested park, we headed to the temple with the largest buddha statue. It was big and imposing. I personally was in awe of the statue. Its big bronze accents and gold details sucked me into its awesomeness. I wished I could have seen more of it, but too many people were in the way. There were oher gold accented statues of the gods of buddhism. They were imposing to me and kind of scary. The interesting part of me was the armor the gods wore. Typically Buddhists are peaceful, but the armor indicates some war or violence in the mythology of buddhism.
After the temple, a group headed back to the hotel. I went back to my room and took a nap by accident. I wish I did not do this. I then went to the ramen shop to eat some egg and rice. Afterwards, I went back to my room and wrote this blog.
I really liked Nara. The deer and the temple were great experiences for me. I connected with nature and the buddhist statues as they made me realize how exciting traditional culture was. Also, the deer were cute. Next, time I want to take one home.
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