Deer, Monkeys, and Gojira

Our day out at Nara and Uji was ace! We headed out in the morning to Nara, and it was freezing cold! We each wore about 5 layers, but were still popsicles by the end of the day. Nara is such a pretty quiet little city, with manic deer roaming around, eating your maps, eating each other, and begging for deer cookies! They were pretty frightening, when they really wanted something from you. I got butted in the butt, and Stace had his Nara city map stolen out of his pocket! I tried to get it back off the deer, but the deer wasn't having any of that. At the main temple there is a GIANT buddha statue... like, really really giant. There's also a hole in a pillar, where if you get through the hole, apparently you will have good luck for the rest of your life. Stace managed to fit through, so hopefully his awesome luck will cancel out my crummy luck :S










We had a stroll around town trying to find some gloves, because we were so cold, but we couldnt find any gloves at all! We had lunch at Mos Burger... which was, uh, not so good. Maybe stick to Maccas next time?

After Nara we went to Uji, which is the Japanese capital of green tea, and the setting of the last chapters of the Tale of Genji (Japanese epic story). We met this cute little old man named Miya on the train who got really excited that we were on the train because he was teaching himself english, and he finally had a chance to use it. His english was really awesome, and he had taught himself using a Japanese radio broadcast for 1 hour a day! What a character! When he smiled you could see his teeth... he only had bottom teeth! None on the top of his mouth! He was really sweet though, and thoroughly impressed with our 4 words of Japanese :D

Uji was one of my favourite spots we've been to so far. First we went to the Tale of Genji Museum, which was really well done. The displays were all in Japanese, but we were given free audio guides in english and it told a brief version of the story, and then we watched a video about the end of the story. I just bought the book (abridged version) today, and am really looking forward to it... I'll give you the brief run-down that I got from the museum:

Genji is born and is in love with his step-mum. He gets married, but had heaps of affairs because he's still in love with his step-mum. He meets someone who looks just like his step-mum and has a kid with her. His wife's attendants give one of his ex-lovers a heckling in public and shame her out so "her soul leaves her body" and she becomes a vengeful spirit, who attacks the wife while she's in childbirth. Genji flees. Emperor sends for him to come back. ... I missed this part.... he dies. The story picks up with his son and grandson (I think from the two different ladies) who are both competing for the same women, and its all super messy when they meet these two chicks, who are the daughters of this lord guy, and he dies and makes his two daughters promise not to leave Uji for frivolous reasons. The older one, who they are both after, vows that she wont ever marry, and they go after the younger sister. The older one is so upset about the situation the younger one is in (having to choose between the two) that she gets sick and dies. Then the younger one runs off to marry someone in town. Then they meet a princess from somewhere far away who *surprise surprise* looks just like the older sister who dies. One of them has it off with her, then the other one kidnaps her. She goes nuts because of the two fighting all the time, then she becomes a buddha and roams the land. Dont know what happens to the two guys.

Wow, so basically its Days of Our Lives, Japan-style. It was such a good museum though!

After that we crossed the bridge which is in the story, and went to the Byodoin temple (theres another one in Hawaii that I've also been to!). This temple is on the ten yen coin and theyre pretty proud of it :D





We wanted to do some tea testing, or a tea ceremony, because this is THE place to get green tea, and we ended up walking past this tea shop, where 16 generations of tea makers had been making tea! This guy was super proud of his tea and his heritage, and with good reason. They have a museum all about his family/tea company, and they have letters and purchase orders from Shoguns and Samurai from back in the 1600's and he's been in about 29483843 magazines and newspapers just about his tea. And the tea is FANTASTIC!!! Im not usually a tea drinker, but man, this tea is awesome!!! Pity I cant bring a whole bunch of it with me!!



The next day we went to Arashiyama, which is a little way out fo the centre of Kyoto. They have a few temples and things, and a monkey park!! Japanese snow monkeys! just minus the snow :D They are scary scary animals - they say dont look them in the eye... DONT LOOK THEM IN THE EYE!! They will jump at you and shriek scarily. You hike up the top of this hill and go into a caged room, where you can get apples and peanuts and feed them through the cages. You dont feel like theyre going to eat you if you step outside, but I think its more to protect you againt mobbing, because the monkeys give each other a bit of a beating to make sure they get the food.









We walked around the area and saw a lot of temples and things, and found the bamboo road, which was pretty awesome!




Today we went to the Golden Pavillion (Kinkakuji), a Handicrafts Centre, and the Heian Shrine. The Golden Pavillion is a lot smaller than I thought it would be, but we were quite lucky that we went on a sunny day, because it brought the colour out quite well. The Heian Shrine was massive, and had a giant massive torii gate across the road. On the picture, May Lee is the tiny speck at the foot of the gate.






And finally, a note of warning... if you are ever in Japan, watch out for this woman:



She can eat. I dont mean like, wow, she eats a fair bit... I mean, OMG run for cover, she is a black hole and we're being sucked into her vortex!! This chick put away around 10 slices of pizza, two or three bowls of noodles and a bowl of rice and curry, and she was still going by the time we left! (we were at an all you can eat pizza place). She had a slice in one had, her other hand was twirling some spaghetti, and she was chewing some food all at the same time! AND she was SKINNY! Japanese people are a mystery to me :S :O

Anyways, nighty nite!
xx Laura