Reachable by express train from Kyoto Station in less than an hour, Nara’s Todai-ji is a temple built on a massive scale. Everything about it feels larger than life: from the wooden pillars of its Great South Gate, Nandaimon, which bills itself as Japan’s largest temple entrance gate, to its equally mammoth Great Buddha Hall, Daibutsuden, which holds what is said to be the world’s largest bronze Buddha statue (via Japan Today).
Walking to the temple from Kintetsu Nara Station will take you through Nara Park, where deer roam freely and can be fed with 200-yen shika-senbei (deer rice crackers). If you’re there when the cherry blossoms are blooming, as we were just last weekend, you can maybe even lure one of the deer over to a sakura tree and come away with a snapshot of the sacred animal against a backdrop of blue skies, green grass, and pink flowers.
Konnichiwa, Bambi.
Cherry Blossom Snow
Visiting Nara again was a nice way to start out the month of April. We got lucky and had perfect spring weather as we took a day trip to Todai-ji from our hotel in Kyoto on Saturday, April 1.
Nandaimon Gate.
It was my first time revisiting the temple since my inaugural trip there way, way back in 2010 during my first winter break in Japan. At that time, the trees inside the entrance to the Great Buddha Hall area (which carries a ¥600 admission fee) were barren and leafless. This time, they were flowering, and I could see that they were shidare-zakura (weeping cherry trees) and what looked like the standard somei-yoshino.
As we were making our way up to the Great Buddha Hall, the wind even created a sakurafubuki effect where the cherry blossom petals were falling all around us like snowflakes. It was an appropriate sight given the winter memories. Yet it also served as a reminder of how fleeting cherry blossom season and life in general is, since it hardly feels like 13 years have passed since I first came to Japan and visited Nara.
The Great Buddha (Daibutsu) Hall Photo Tour
Inside the hall, you can see a gold bodhisattva on either side of the colossal Great Buddha. Off in the corner, one of the two 10-foot-tall gold shibi ornaments that used to adorn the roof sits on display.
Toward the back of the hall, there are also two wooden statues of the Buddha’s imposing guardians, along with a famous pillar with a hole at the base of it, which is supposed to be the same size as the Buddha’s nostril. When I was there in 2010, I saw someone trying to squeeze through the hole for good luck (per tradition), but they had it sealed off this time as a lingering coronavirus safety measure.
Nara was Japan’s first fixed capital. Prior to its establishment as such in the year 710, the capital moved around every time a new emperor came to power. Japan-guide.com also notes that the Great Buddha Hall was once the world’s largest wooden building, though the original hall was even bigger and the current one has been surpassed in recent years by more modern structures.
Gyumabushi and Kohfuku-ji
For lunch in Nara, we ate gyumabushi — a regional variant of gyudon (beef and rice bowls) — at a local Japanese restaurant called Mimaya, located right around the corner from Todai-ji. Azusa said it felt a bit weird to dine on cow meat after we had just spent time walking among and feeding the deer. My apologies to any vegetarians for this, but I was reminded that deer curry, as opposed to beef curry, is a specialty in the Fuji Five Lakes area, which just goes to show that they’re not so sacred everywhere in Japan.
On our way back to the train station, as we were cutting through Nara Park again, we also stopped by another local temple, Kohfuku-ji. As one of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara, it and Todai-ji are both UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Whereas the two seven-story pagodas that once flanked Todai-ji’s Great Buddha Hall are no longer standing, Kohfuku-ji still has a five-story and three-story pagoda as well as some interesting round temple halls. You can see more pictures of it, Todai-ji, and Nara Park in my full gallery of Nara photos.
A Bit of Housekeeping
And now for a bit of housekeeping—or spring cleaning, in keeping with the season. Since 2023 started, I’ve been pretty good about maintaining my New Year’s resolution of posting something here once a week … up until last week, that is. I felt guilty about missing a week, but things were just too busy with our Kyoto trip and some recent changes that have taken place at my job. That’s why I briefly returned to Twitter last week, just to share a few photos from our first couple days in Kyoto, in the spirit of some quick-and-easy microblogging.
I don’t even know what’s happening over on Twitter anymore. When I saw the new Dogecoin logo, based on the Shiba Inu, a Japanese breed of dog, I thought someone had hacked my account at first. Suffice it to say, I’ll have more to share here from Kyoto, Osaka, and of course, Tokyo, in the weeks to come. However, I may not always be posting five times a month (like I did in January and February) as I take on some other new endeavors outside my usual ones online.
You’ll be seeing a little less of me over on /Film, too, as I’m only writing half-time, three days a week, there now. But I have another opportunity that recently opened up (more on that once I have something official to show for it), and I’d like to also get back to some other offline writing pursuits that I’ve been neglecting. That said, I will make a firm commitment to be back here within a week or less for an overdue Kyoto-related post.