Nara

I think this post is now back to chronological order. Right after Kyoto, Hannah and I decided to jump over to Nara for a quick trip to see ever more of Japan.  Since we were super rushed on time we did a lot of research on what exactly we wanted to see and were able to hit all the major sites in just a few hours! 

We put all of our bags in storage lockers at Nara station and figured out the local bus station to get to the center of town.  When you get off the bus in the main city center it is the coolest/weirdest site because there are deer literally roaming everywhere.  They are in the gardens, streets, and even poking their heads into restaurants.  They are soooo used to being around humans that they are not scared of us at all.  On the contrary they actually come up to humans and beg for food.  Hannah and I bought a few deer biscuits and fed some of the deer.  Unfortunately, we were around an aggressive male deer group who head butted us endlessly for food.  It was scarier than I would imagine, or I'm just a wimp! 

Then we walked to a very large temple which houses the largest sitting Buddha in Japan (the second largest being in Kamakura).  I wasn't expecting much as this Buddha was in a temple and didn't have the back drop of a nature, however when you walk into the temple you are literally blown away by the size of the statue.  What was especially interesting to me was that people were not just there as tourists, but so many of them were there to actually pray.