today was a long day. i had to get from kanazawa to nara, via 4 trains. this was quite a journey, and i didnt really know what i was getting into.

i had to go from kanazawa station to tsuruga station, then from there to maibara station, then to kyoto station, and finally to nara station.

i found out afterward that there was an easier route that would have gone kanazawa > tsuruga > kyoto > nara, basically going the other way around that large lake (lake biwa).

when i booked these trains, i did it through the jr west website. it was pretty simple to book, you just input your departure and arrival station and it selects the route for you. what i failed to respect, though, was the time between arrivival and departure. for 2 of these trips, i had less than 10 minutes to get off my train and get to the next one.

i didnt realize my mistake until i picked up the tickets and looked at them. i took my first train to tsuruga, and was able to make it to my second train with only 8 minutes. i had less than a minute to spare when i boarded the second train to maibara.

upon arrival in maibara, i had 7 minutes to get to the next train that goes to kyoto. i was in such a rush that i left my backpack on the train. my backpack contained my laptop, ipad, camera, both lenses, passport, medication, and all the chargers for everything. everything i brought on the trip except clothing was in this backpack. actual nightmare scenario. this backpack was worth like $5,000 depending on how you value the medication. “only” like $3200 if you vallue the medication via any country other than america.

i didn’t realize i forgot the backpack until i was about to get on the next train. so i panic rushed back to the nearest station staff and broken google translate explained my situation. thankfully, the train i arrived on had maibara station as its final destination, and was not immediately going anywhere. so it was still there. i was able to panic run back to the train and get it back, but this was nearly the worst day ever.

but of course because of this, i missed my train from maibara to kyoto. i explained my situation to the staff, and they told me just get on the next train and show my tickets and explanation to the staff on board the train, and they would sort me out. since seating is assigned, there was a chance the seat i booked was already taken on this train.

thankfully, it seems like everyone took the train i missed, because i was the only person in the entire train car for this one.

but because i missed the original train to kyoto, it means i also missed my train from kyoto to nara and had to re-buy it.

but something i have always found annoying about train travel in japan actually saved me some money this time.

when you buy tickets on a shinkansen (bullet train), you actually buy two different tickets. you buy one ticket that covers literally the seat in the train, and another ticket that is a charge for the transit from station a to station b. ticket one covers accessing the train, and the ticket 2 covers the cost for moving from one city to another via transit. i have always found this annoying and felt like they should be combined into one ticket.

the train tickets are valid for a specific train and specific seat at a specific time. but the secondary tickets, the “basic fare tickets”, are valid for 24 hours. so while i missed my originally planned trip from kyoto to nara, i only had to buy the “seat” ticket since i already had a valid “basic fare” ticket. the “basic fare ticket” in this particular case was like 80% of the total cost, so having to rebook this train upon arrival in kyoto cost me…. $2.

i need anyone reading to know how hard it is to not pivot from this section into a long, angry, 5 paragraph rant about my distaste for america’s car centric culture and general lack of access to affordable and high quality transit systems.

while on these trains, i did take some beautiful pictures of japan’s countryside. media will often have you believe that japan is a tightly clustered apartment hellscape with too many people and not enough room for anything. and if you only go to tokyo, i could see how it might be possible to get that impression. but japan has plenty of beautiful countryside.

at last after 5 hours of transit, i arrived at nara station.

my friend tsukasa lives in kyoto, and came to meet me here. turns out i actually went to the wrong station, though. i was supposed to go to kintetsu-nara station, and i went to nara station. oopsie!

kintetsu-nara station is about a 5 minute walk from my hotel. nara station is only a 15 minute walk from kintetsu-nara station, but i had a 30 pound backpack and a 50 pound suitcase, i really didn’t feel like lugging it there.

so my friend met me at the station i mistakenly traveled to, and we took a cab straight to my hotel.

i ran into the hotel, emptied my backpack, left the suitcase, and immediately headed back out to walk around nara park. i did not realize, but my friend tsukasa had quite a list of activities planned for today. i have been approaching this vacation with a very relaxed pace, doing one or two things a day and trying my best to avoid getting exhausted. but this would not be the case today, as there was a lot to see here.

nara is a pretty big city, population 367,000. nara was actually the first capital of japan, way back in the year 710. there are 3 historic capital cities of japan - nara (at the time, heijo-kyo), kyoto (at the time, heian-kyo), and tokyo. kyo, or 京, means capital city. you may have noticed at some point that kyoto and tokyo are weirdly similar names.

東京 = tou kyou = east capital

京都 = kyou to = capital capital/city

i think it is kind of funny that kyoto, which is not the capital of japan, is literally named “capital city”. but this is because the capital of japan has moved several times over its extremely long history as a nation.

strangely enough, while researching this, i learned that there is no legally defined capital of japan. there is no specific legislation that dictates tokyo as the capital, and when questioned on it in 2018, the prime minister at the time gave the most politician answer of all time, saying that “while no laws define the capital of Japan, they believed that ‘the capital of Japan is Tokyo is widely accepted by the people’”.

anyway, that was kind of a ramble.

so, lets talk about nara. from the image at the beginning of the post (or if you’ve ever looked into visiting japan), you may be aware that nara is famous for deer. nara is the original capital of japan. there are many shrines, temples, museums, and cultural activities here. it is kind of a shame that most tourism to japan tells people to just cruise over here from osaka for a few hours or a day trip. this city is amazing, and i think it deserves to be experienced standalone.

per wikipedia, “According to the legendary history of Kasuga Shrine, the god Takemikazuchi arrived in Nara on a white deer to guard the newly built capital of Heijō-kyō. Since then, the deer have been regarded as heavenly animals, protecting the city and the country.”

the city is full of deer. and when i say full of deer, i mean they are everywhere. if there was a spectrum where one end is “animals in a zoo enclosure”, and the other end is something like the monkeys in nagano that are fully wild but have learned to be nice to humans and come to a place where humans are, i would say the deer here are somewhere in between. the city would have you believe they are fully wild. but all the male deer have had their antlers sawed off. so there is some degree of direct human control over these animals.

its a really beautiful sight, the deer just mingle amongst humans and are friendly. you can buy rice crackers to feed the deer, and the deer are very aware of that. they also walk up to you and bow to ask for food. if you bow at one, it will bow back. i also saw multiple instances of the deer understanding how crosswalks work. i watched them walk up to the crosswalk and wait for the light to turn green before crossing. if i had to guess, i think they actually just understand the beep noise for the vision impaired means “ok to cross” rather than observing the little green crosswalk light.

i was going to buy some rice crackers to feed the deer, because it was already afternoon and all the stores that sell them were sold out. the deer still approached me and bowed, and licked my hands expectantly. but once they discovered that i did not have any rice crackers, they pretty quickly moved on.

i also learned the following while writing this post per wikipedia:

“A 2009 study by Harumi Torii (who is the assistant professor of wildlife management at Nara University of Education), in which necropsies of deceased shika deer in Nara park were conducted, found that the deer in Nara park were malnourished from not having enough grass to eat, and eating too many rice crackers and other human food. The rice crackers commonly fed to the deer lack fiber and other nutrients deer require, so when the deer eat too many rice crackers it causes the gut microbiome in the deer to become unbalanced, among other problems. 7 out of 8 deer dissected had a “kidney fat index” (which measures how much fat has attached to the kidneys) below 40%, which indicates malnutrition in the deer. And of those 7, some had kidney fat below 10%, which indicates starvation. Compared to male shika deer outside of Nara park, which weigh about 50 kilograms on average, the male shika deer in Nara park only weigh 30 kilograms on average. The color of the femoral marrow in Nara park’s deer was also abnormal, indicating malnourishment. When living deer in Nara park were observed during the study, it was discovered that rice crackers made up about one third of the average deer’s diet in Nara park, with grass making up about two thirds. The deer have become so excessively numerous in Nara park, that there isn’t enough grass in the park for all of them to live entirely on grass, creating a dependency on humans for rice crackers. This lack of grass also causes the deer to resort to eating garbage and plants that they would not normally eat.The deer in Nara park have become overpopulated due to being fed by people frequently, and having few predators and the deer have caused extensive damage to trees (by feeding on bark), bamboo (by eating their shoots), and other plants in the park. Additionally, the deer have become aggressive towards humans in their solicitation of food (which leads to people getting injured by deer,) aggressive towards each other in competition for rice crackers, and have lost their fear of predators in general. For these reasons, tourists may want to consider not feeding the deer in Nara park, and simply observe them instead.”

while this sounds pretty bad, the realistic alternative here is hunting the deer down to keep them out of the city and/or predators eating them etc. i am not trying to say this is a horrible place, and i am also not trying to say this is 100% a good thing. but it isn’t the idyllic paradise of coexistence it may be painted as when consuming japan tourism content. i suppose nothing ever really is, though.

i also mentioned earlier that the male deer have their antlers trimmed to prevent potential damage to other deer or people. this apparently dates back to the edo period (1600 - 1868), where the deer are lassoed, the antlers are removed, and then the deer are released. the antlers are offered to the kami at kasuga shrine. i kind of expected this to be some boring dystopia style recent development where some guy got mauled and sued the city and now they have to do this, or something. but no, this is a tradition dating back hundreds of years.

tōdai-ji

our next stop was a short walk from nara park, todai-ji temple. i don’t think i have mentioned this enough, but visiting places like this, seeing buildings and statues that are 6 times older than the country i live in, is a really surreal experience. the whole of american (united states, specifically) history is so short. people around the world like to joke that american culture is cheeseburgers and firearms, but seeing culture that can be traced back thousands of years is really something else. i don’t think photos can really capture it. the smell of thousand year old buildings, the atmosphere of silent respect, there is just something uncapturable about things like this. i’ve done my best to do so anyway, of course.

this temple was constructed in the year 738. it is nearly 1300 years old. like most old structures in japan, this place has been reconstructed a few times. since japan is quite prone to natural disasters like earthquakes, fires, tsunamis, or in some cases 1940s american air raids, many places have been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times over the centuries.

the giant buddha statue, or daibutsu, (the 5th image in the below gallery) was originally built in the year 743. it 49 feet tall, is made of pure bronze, and apparently weighs over 550 tons. thats over a million pounds. the construction of this statue consumed most of japan’s bronze at the time.

over the years it suffered a lot of damage, including the head falling off in the year 855. it has been restored and repaired several times. per wikipedia, “The current hands of the statue were made in the Momoyama Period (1568–1615), and the head was made in the Edo period (1615–1867).”

buddhist sculpture hall

our next stop was back in nara park, visiting a buddhist sculpture gallery. i only got a few photos here, as the vast majority of the objects here are no photos allowed. this was a really fascinating exhibit, but most of the really interesting stuff was not allowed to be photographed.

ビールとラーメン

we were beginning to get hungry, so tsukasa suggested we go to a ramen place nearby. on the way, we stopped at a local brewery called yamato, and each got a flight of beer. in particular, the one on the far right here was their melon pale ale and it was amazing.

about a 1 minute walk from this brewery was the ramen spot tsukasa wanted to visit. this place serves a local specialty ramen called tenri stamina ramen, referred to by locals as “tensuta”.

tenri is a city north of nara, and stamina ramen refers to ramen that will “give you energy”. usually it contains a lot of chili paste, garlic, or both, and a large helping of chinese cabbage thrown in. stamina ramen is famous in ibaraki prefecture, which is east of tokyo. but tenri stamina ramen is famous in tenri. this restaurant we went to is apparently pretty famous, though this is a branch of their main restaurant in the city of tenri 10 km away.

my idiot american tourist began to show here pretty immediately. i didnt know the ramen was famously quite spicy, and i just heard my japanese friend recommend a ramen restaurant, and was immediately in. i ordered one with a bunch of chopped leek added on top.

this ramen was (for me, at least) very spicy.

i was determined to not look like an idiot gaijin during this experience, so i did my best to eat it like a champion and not show my pain.

the inside of my mouth while eating this ramen:

despite the extreme spice, i absolutely loved this meal. it was easily the best ramen i have ever had. i genuinely think this experience may have single-handedly turned me into a spicy food person. my mouth is watering as i write this days later.

crashing

my initial plans for this day were to arrive in nara and then just hang out in the hotel for the rest of the day. i certainly did not expect to do all the things i wanted to do in nara on the day i arrived there.

the ramen place is directly next to kintetsu-nara station, which is conveniently the place tsukasa heads back home to kyoto from. so we parted ways here, with plans to meet up again in kobe the following day. its only about a 5 minute walk to the hotel from this station, but i got a few great photos along the way.