Deers, deers and more deers

Life is back at normal. Students are back at school and I'm back at traveling around Japan exhausting myself in the process and taking lots of pictures.

Today I decided to go check the Nara park and the wild Shika's there. I figured that with Sakura season still remaining it would be good idea to visit couple parks first to enjoy the Sakura for a while before it's over. So waking up 6.15 I headed for the train as soon as I got morning things done. Got a valuable lesson for travelling trains in Japan. First train might not be fastest. Got to station earlier than thought so was on Shinagawa 30 minutes ahead schedelude. Then I took shinkansen that was not the Hikari I was originally planning to take. Bad idea. This was kakuekiteisha(or in English ”local” train ie one that stops at every station. End result was that I arrived later than I would have if I had waited for the Hikari I was supposed to take. Whee. Then I jumped to first train toward Nara and...Another kakuekiteisha that rather than 32 minute ride took like over an hour. 

Over hour later than expected even though I was on the move 30 minutes sooner than thought. I also mistakenly went from Kyouto to Nara with non-JR line so had to pay the ticket(610 yen). Well good lesson on how to use the ticket machine! Actually pretty damn easy. You don't even need to know where you are going. Just the price. Insert money, press ticket price, get ticket, go to gate, insert the ticket, take ticket AND SAVE IT! You put it on gate when you leave. If ticket was wrong value you go to another machine to insert some more coin(so basically you could just put smallest amount and pay rest when you arrive).

From the station it was easy enough to find to the park. Head to east exit and keep going forward. Plenty of guidance visible too. When I reached park I spotted some vendors selling what I thought were cookies. Kept walking and bang there was shika right in front of me. Woot? There's cars running on my left? Didn't seem to bother them. Then it hit me that the vendor must be shika food eating vendors so I quickly headed back and bought bunch(150 yen). Went to nearest shika that immediately came to sniff what I had. They were eating happily what I gave. No wonder these don't mind coming near humans when they are so well fed :D Everybody was handling. After taking pictures, scratching them and getting picture of me taken next to shika I continued toward the park proper hoping to find temple I had seen on map.

 Some sort of buddha statue museum or something. Didn't have time to go there unfortunately.

After finding path to it I found myself in street with lots of souvenir selling stores and...More shikas! You could see these brown furred beggars everywhere! Bought another set and before I had even got the wrapping out I had one of them tugging at me. Then another. Giving cookie to one and third joined in line. Then fourth. Before I could say ”whoops” I had seven of the cute buggers tugging at me until I had emptied my pack of shika-food. Greedy little animals! Another tourist was getting chased around by swarm of shikas much to the amusement of everybody(and everybody was amused when I was being swarmed by these ”I eat all you have” things.

I bought later THIRD pack and this was even wilder experience. Before I could even get the wrappings open FIFTEEN of them(yes I counted) were pushing at me. One put his head into plastic bag and took out wooden flute I had bought. Another actually bit me to leg in his frenzy to find the delicious(?) cookies. Are these shikas or terminators? Don't recommend letting children feed if there's several of them around. Individual isn't bad but whole swarm could stampede over small children! Well these ARE wild animals so some care is to be taken! Well still for adult they shouldn't be dangerous. Just try to keep any souvenirs you happen to be carrying out of their mouth!

(And they don't care what they try to eat! Not sure how tasty iron chain is though...)

Well the temple was the one holding Great Buddha. By god that's one tall stature! 15 meters I read. Obviously the building housing it was quite a big one to boot though in olden times it was even bigger(seems it has been rebuilt several times).

After seeing the Great Buddha I bought some souvenirs(including one I'm not sure how I'm to get that one home. Might have to post it. It's not heavy but it's LONG!). That took bit more effort as I had to find post office to get some more cash since hadn't brought enough with me(here's btw tip to Japanese travelling foreigners. You need to withdraw, find a post office. Not sure why banks aren't best place to do that but I can't withdraw from bank ATM's. Post office's ATM however is fine and dandy). Next was museum containing lots of items from Nara's history, many over thousand year old(some were from the 8^th century!). Unfortunately pictures were strictly forbidden there too. Finally I walked around the park some more marveling the beautiful sights.

Oh and weather was today PERFECT. Warm and sunny and not a sight of rain! Nice timing for JR pass usage say!

Also noticed interesting advertisement. Kimono exhibition starting 20^th. I just might have to revisit Nara between 21-24(think 24 was last day. Maybe do nice symmetry and visit Nara in first and last day of JR pass!). I love the kimonos so seems like nice exhibition to go to.

With clock approaching 18 I headed for station(this time JR) and again with local train took longer than usual to get home. Hadn't had time to eat either so was feeling very hungry so bought obento box and sushi set. But the sushi set(8 pieces) actually filled me up pretty damn well so ended up saving the obento box for later use. Woot? I ate breakfast on train, then nothing for 11 hours and then 8 sushi pieces fill me up?

On my last train trip before home station I managed to screw things up a bit. Rather than go straight to exit gate I mistakenly took position near the entrance gate...On the wrong side! Had to exit from wrong gate(but no way I could have got through the crowd with all the luggage I had) and even that required bit of co-operation from other passengers. Who would believe train would be fully crowded around 23.00?

Tomorrow I'll be visiting Kairaku-en. Thankfully it's only 133 kilometers away so don't even need to wake early. Nice seeing I was up for about 18 and half hours today...Would suck if I only got 5 hours sleep for sure!