To celebrate being married for 5 years, the illustrious James Hornsby and I decided to save up all our dollars to do something really cool. Which was go on a tour of Japan! The tour was jam-packed, so it’ll be broken up in to smaller, sustainable posts of chunky goodness!
We flew into Osaka, and started our tour by going to Nara Park to visit our first shrine of the tour, called TÅdai-ji. To get to this shrine, we had to weave our way through numerous Sika deer. The deer are a national treasure due to being regarded as messengers of the gods in Shinto religion and roam around freely while occasionally trying to check your pockets for snacks. We’ll come back to that in a moment.
The entrance gate to the shrine
The shrine houses the largest bronze statue of Buddha in the world – around 50 feet tall and weighing over 500 tons. It’s also been burned and earthquaked down a few times over the centuries, but has been repaired each time. Our guide told us that only the bottom portion where the feet are contain original construction.
The shrine’s super-tall wooden building that contains the tall Buddha and several other pieces.
The building was very detailed.
Buddha, who is much taller than me.
Several not-as-tall guardians flanked Buddha to keep company/fight off any bad spirits.
There’s a specific support post in the shrine that had a long line of people leading to it. We learned that the post is said to be the stuff of legends – it’s said that those who pass through the hole will be blessed in their next life with enlightenment. But it’s not a terribly large hole; most of those trying to pass through were children.
One of the guardians watches the pillar-crawlers below.
After we explored the shrine, we went back out to complete an important mission: Buy deer crackers to feed the deer. Because when else would we have such a chance?
The deer hovered around the deer-cracker vendors, but didn’t bother the vendor at all. There’s a system and these deer know how to use it.
One of the signs warning of deer-related problems that could happen. I love these illustrations!
As soon as money exchanges hands and crackers leave the vendor’s stall, these deer make a bee-line for you!
Even when they have crackers in their mouths, the deer plot acquiring more crackers.
Our tour guide advised us to put up our hands as soon as we ran out of snacks and avoid putting our hands in our pockets, as the deer will assume we have snacks in our pockets to give them. Sound advice, as some of the deer tugged on our bags and one tried to steal James’s passport from his back pocket.
To commemorate the visit, we made sure to pick up some overly-adorable deer souvenirs from the shop, as well as use the gachapon (toy capsule machine) to get random deity/religious mini-statues.
The best part is the deer charm features the deer nomming on some crackers.