Marc's Public Blog - Trips to other locations

While there was much more to see in Kyoto of course, my dad got enough of an overview, so we went to Nara and dropped our luggage at the Ryokan New Wakasa where I stayed two years ago with Jennifer. It was still an awesome Ryokan with super reasonable pricing for the location, room size, very good food for dinner and breakfast, as well as service.

Deer cross the street without even waiting for the green light :)

this deer crossed the water to go enjoy the fresh grass :)

We started with Kofuku-ji, its museum and statue display:

the main hall is still being rebuilt. Completion date: 2018

you could make a donation to the construction and write your name on a tile

Next, we took a cab to Shin-Yakushi-ji:

This put us in a good place to enter the park from the south side and head towards Kasuga-taisha:

After a quick lunch, we walked up the street full of shops, Zoshicho towards Todaiji Nigatsudo:

Eventually we got to Tamukeyama Hachiman-gu Shrine and Todaiji Nigatsudo:

wheel in the stone

From there we were able to get back down to the Bell and Todai-ji, but my dad went to rest then, so I did a quick detour towards the 2 gardens that were nearby, where Okuno-San, a very nice volunteer guide, gave me a tour:

I then did a quick stop at the temple nearby Kaidan-in, next Todai-ji which I hadn't seen so far:

Which then put me at Todai-ji around 16:30 when most of the tourists had already left:

what the old temple looked like before it burned down, with 2 huge pagodas on its side

awesome, no one was there :)

I still had time to go see the Nara national museum which closed late that day:

I then went back to our Ryokan to enjoy a great dinner with my dad in our room:

This was a nice day in Nara :)

I leave you with a crying deer, I think it was crying because all the tourists that feed it, were gone :)