Japan Day 4

Another early start to the day. My goal for today was to make it out to Nara park in the morning, take a look around and get to see the “cute” deer out there. Spoiler alert, the deer were not cute and I would go so far as to call them assholes, but we’ll get to that soon. I had my days crossed and my train mishap was actually today, not on the trip to Osaka, but the outcome was the same and I made it out to Nara well before things were open and all was quiet.

In fact, today was full of new public transportation challenges. The subway station right outside my hotel only allows for you to board the train in a single direction. There’s no access to the other side of the tracks. Not realizing this, I went through the gate with my Suica card and then found that I needed to be on the other side of the tracks. There was no attendant at this station and my Suica card would not let me scan out of the same station I entered, meaning I just had to go through the gate and worry about fixing it later. Doing this left my Suica card as “trip in progress” until I could find someone to fix it, leaving me to use cash for all my travel today.

Once I made it to Nara, I finally had to tackle the bus system for the first time. I’m by no means an expert, but the bus system in Nara was fairly easy as it was just a couple of loops going in opposite directions. I took a bus over close to the park and started looking for somewhere to grab breakfast. There is an obscure little shop called McDonalds where I got a traditional Japanese breakfast. In all seriousness, though, the breakfast sandwich was stellar, and it was nice having something that reminded me of being home a bit. That feeling of homesickness was a reoccurring theme for the day. After breakfast, I headed towards Nara park.

I started with some temples and historical buildings in Kofuku-ji. I setup my tripod to catch a photo of the Kofuku-ji Gojunoto (Five Storied Pagoda). Well getting everything setup I noticed and older gentleman taking interest in what I was doing. At first I thought he was going to give me grief for setting up a tripod, but he ended up being curious about my trip. He spoke pretty decent English, and he asked me what I thought about Japan. I told him I thought the country was beautiful and had been enjoying myself. He gave me a gracious bow and thanked me for my kind words. It really hit me at how much pride he took in his country as my simple compliment seemed had evoked such a response.

Moving on from the temple, I found a small stand that was selling crackers for the deer in the park. These deer were very smart and clearly keyed in on the situation. There were about 4 deer watching the stand where the man was selling cookies and were waiting for someone to stop by and purchase something. As soon I bought the crackers, the 4 deer stood up and began to follow me. I walked across the road to an open area of the park, assuming I could lose my tails. Not only did the original group continue to follow me, other deer took notice and by the time I had my tripod setup there were a dozen deer surrounding me, some of those nipping at my coat to find my crackers.

I spent about 15 minutes interacting with the deer and feeding them. I tried to prioritize the little ones, but these animals were very pushy. If I wasn’t paying attention to one group of them, they would start nudging me or nipping at my coat to get my attention. I went through one pack of cookies and had no interest in picking up a second package of them. Even once I was done, there was one deer who didn’t believe me. He spent the next 15 minutes following me around well I was on the phone just waiting for me to dole out some more food. Eventually, he grew tired of following me and let me be.

I walked along a small shopping center just outside of the park and was surprised at the quality of goods there. I was expecting some shops with handmade items or something specific to the area, instead it was a ton of generic tourist quality souvenirs. I grabbed a small snack and made my way back to the bus so I could start my trek back to Kyoto. The ride back to Kyoto was much smoother, and I made it back in about half the time it took me to get to Nara. Back at the Kyoto station I could get my Sucia card fixed and cold finally stop using coins to pay for all my transportation.

I went back to the hotel to rest up for a few moments and prepare for my evening in Kyoto. The first stop I had planned was Toei Studio Park. I expected the “park” to be a small studio with some neat trivia on different Toei Studio media. What I hadn’t realized was that it was a full-fledged amusement park (minus the rides). Toei Studio Park was absolutely huge to be nestled in the middle of the city like it was.

I spent some time walking around the different costume exhibits. It was awesome seeing the Super Sentai costumes. These are the same costumes that were used by the Power Rangers here in the US. What struck me was the size of the costumes. I know that on average Japanese men are shorter than US men, but the costumes looked like they wouldn’t fit anyone over 5ft tall. The quality of them was very impressive, especially given the quality of broadcasts when they were being used.

After viewing the different costumes and props I moved to the outside portion of the park. This area was impressive to see, but I was not familiar with a lot of the media portrayed in this portion so it didn’t resonate very well with me. I got to see the giant Evangelion 01 in the back of the park, but even that was setup as a photo trap. It was around this time that being solo for the trip was wearing on me. These experiences were neat but during this time in the afternoon I was essentially disconnected from everyone I knew because of the time-zone difference. I tried to shake it off and keep going.

Leaving Toei Studio Park, I took a bus over to Arashiyama so I could visit the Bamboo Forest that I’ve seen online multiple times. Arashiyama had the highest number of tourists I had seen until this point. It was nice being able to hear some random English conversations as I walked around. I saw a few couples walking around in Kimono, which looked great. The selfie/social media culture is present around the globe. Everywhere I walked in the bamboo forest, there was someone trying to get the right pose/angle for their Instagram!

There were several shrines in the area, all of which were selling small Omamori (御守/お守り). I felt like I could use a bit of luck getting through the trip, so I picked up a small luck charm to carry with me on the rest of my trip. My feet were absolutely killing me at this point, but I wanted to make one more stop at the Kimono lights before heading back for the night.

The photos I had seen of the Kimono lights were very misleading. The lights are basically in the middle of a train station and there is one row you could carefully frame to make it look like there were tons of the lights in a secluded area. Well it was nice seeing this iconic spot, it was not as exciting as I hope it would be. I hopped on the train and while waiting for it to get moving, I had time to speak with a couple from Seattle. They were on the second leg of their journey, arriving from Malaysia a few days prior.

I grabbed some takeout to eat at the hotel. I was in desperate need to give my feet some time to rest, and figured lounging around in sandals would help with that. Well eating, I talked with a group of tourist in the hostel common area. One of them made a remark about how “drunk Americans start hugging people and saying things like I love you”, which caused me to chuckle. He apologized, but I told him I was “guilty as charged.”

There were 3 groups chatting, with one being from Australia and another from Germany. The man from Germany had just finished a semester at a Japanese college and was spending a month traveling around before heading back to Germany to finish his studies. The lad from Australia was in the middle of a 4 month trip around the world! It was interesting listening to them make plans to go out to the club after and realizing just how different our sightseeing was.

This evening I decided I was going to cut the trip short 2 days and reduce the time I spent in Tokyo. Even though I was having a good time, I was feeling unsure about being away for a full 12 days. Retrospectively, I’m glad I made this choice. I was feeling pretty wiped out by the end of the trip and I don’t know how I would have made it another 2 days on my own.