Japan: Day 7

"Ohayō Gozaimasu!" ("Good Morning!"). Blogger didn't save one of my drafts properly and it deleted my first version of a good portion of this post, so it might be a bit more terse due to the time I lost having to rewrite this. 😳 Apologies!

We finished up in Kyoto by visiting one of our last Shinto shrines, Fushimi Inari Taisha. This shrine is unique because it has thousands of torii gates (they look like arches to us). See below for an example of a torii gate (if you ever see one, you'll know you're at a Shinto shrine and not a Buddhist temple)! 

Also, as you see in the pictures above, the place was crawling with Japanese students. Apparently June is their "field trip" month so we saw many kiddos of all ages throughout the day. They were so delighted every time we said "Hi!" and invited them to practice English on us. They got all shy and excited when we would gush over their successful "Hi's" and "Bye's." 

Some of our boys were in a bit of a silly mood...

After wrapping up our time in Kyoto, we made our way to Nara, home of another Great Buddha and many, MANY deer. The deer are sacred in Nara due to their connection in Japanese mythology to a Shinto god, so they are protected and almost domesticated despite still being technically wild (many will "bow" to you if you bow to them; it's pretty cool to see!). 

We were dropped off on Higashimuki Shopping Street to get lunch before heading to Kasuga Taisha Shrine. Afterwards, when we stopped in at the bathroom quickly at the subway station, I saw this note on the wall in one stall. I would love help making heads or tails of it:

???

The Kasuga Taisha Shrine was beautiful, and the path up to it was lined with stone structures covered in moss. It was also lined with many curious deer who had the students completely enamoured. 

After visiting Kasuga and "oohing" and "ahing" over the deer, we completed a lovely walk from the shrine to Todai-ji Temple, which is the largest wooden building in the world (according to my ticket stub, at least). It has to be big, though, because this structure houses one of the largest Buddhas in the country. He made the other 'Great Buddha' we saw in Kamakura look like a Polly Pocket. 

Look at the adorable young-uns waving at us in their yellow hats in this CLIP (and in the pic above) during our walk.

Apparently this street has featured in some famous movies, The Last Samurai being one of them.

Below is the main hall of Todai-ji:

Walking up to the temple and meandering through this hall felt reminiscent of visiting a cathedral. It really felt like an Asian equivalent to a European cathedral like St. Peter's Basilica. St. Peter's is still much, much larger, but the scale of this religious building still felt somehow on par. Probably because the Buddha was just so massive. I don't see how anyone can walk in without gasping or exclaiming about its size. The effect of its largeness is heightened by the fact that you don't see the Buddha until you enter the doorway and it completely dominates the entire space in a way that inspires awe (the structure was literally built for the Buddha).

As we walked around the statue, our tour guide showed a few of us who were still near her asking questions about a pillar with a little rectangular tunnel carved through it that people can slither through. Here's a CLIP of Ronia demonstrating the process. I heard it had something to do with bringing you happiness.

After Todai-ji Temple, we made our way to the most highly anticipated activity of the day: feeding deer in Nara Deer Park. This time made for some hilarious moments with very persistent deer. 

Playing with the deer ended abruptly when we found ourselves in a downpour. Those of us who had brought umbrellas only got wet below the knee, but everyone else, even those with "raincoats" got anywhere from quite damp to completely soaked through. Here's a CLIP of the rain just for a taste of what it was like. 

We had time to mostly dry off during our hour or so long bus ride to our final destination of the trip: Dotonbori, Osaka. Most of our hotels up to this point were somewhat out of the way of the main hustle and bustle of the city, but this time EF pulled out all the stops. Our hotel was a few hundred yards from the main stretch and canal of Dotonbori, the food and night life district in Osaka. Picture Vegas meets Venice Beach meets Times Square meets the County Fair, and you might have some idea of what this district felt like. 

Michiyo gave each of us 2,000 yen and sent everyone out to find dinner and enjoy a night on the town. 

Some of us tried a revolving sushi bar, barely cooked (intentionally so) Kobe beef sushi (so good), Takiyoki (an octopus cheese ball), matcha milk tea with boba, dango (rice cake ball, like mochi), and anything that looked good! 

We have some free time tomorrow morning, but tonight is our last night in Japan. It has been a wonderful trip, and I can't wait to come back soon. I hope students are inspired (and feel more confident) to come again or maybe even study abroad here. 

Ms. Ruch and I were talking about about how one of the things that makes travelling here trickier is the inability to communicate well with the locals. One of my favorite things about travelling in England is the conversations I've had with people from there. The language barrier makes that particularly difficult, because the people we've interacted with here who "speak English" have such thick accents that it's still hard to understand them and much is still lost in translation. I'll just have to learn more Japanese if I come back again!

I'll probably post a few items tomorrow, but today's post is the last day with a full roster of activities. Bittersweet! 

It was a pleasure documenting this trip, and I hope you enjoyed the updates. Thank you, all!

~Ms. Carr