“Let’s not climb a mountain today,” we vowed as we set off on our journey this morning. We were both still feeling the effects of walking up what my iPhone pedometer claims were 58 flights of stairs (which is likely inaccurate because I counted at least ten million) and over 9 miles yesterday. No mountains for a day, yes, surely that would be an achievable goal in this country made of mountains and volcanoes and in this city nestled at the foot of mountains.
Let’s make today’s theme something more pleasant, like animals!
Nara and Todaiji
We took an early train down to Nara, which is home to Todaiji (東大寺), the largest Buddha in Japan, and lots and lots of Japanese deer.
Like sheep in New Zealand, I’m sure the deer outnumber the people in Nara. They’re creatively called “Japanese deer” and they roam the parks freely, dozing in the sun or begging for deer crackers off tourists who bought them from stands around the park. One of them even casually crossed the street with the signal in the crosswalk with us!
Before the tourist hordes could descend upon Todaiji, we made our way through the park and to Todaiji, which is a complex that contains many large wooden structures that house the giant Buddha.
We wound our way through the entrance gates, through giant wooden doors and up to the main building. The Buddha sat there in all his golden glory, surrounded by other statues and guardians and ambivalent to the crowds beginning to surge around his feet.
After the main attraction, we embarked on a walking tour of the surrounding shrines and temples, which we hadn’t done the last time I was here. This meant a small amount of up, but it wasn’t climbing a mountain, so we were ok with that.
The route took us off the main tourist route and up some cute old Japanese streets to Nigatsu-do (二月堂), a hall with a nice view of Todai-ji and Nara city.
Just past Nigatsu-do, we found Tamukeyama Hachimangu (手向山八幡宮). Inside, we found prayers written on little doves and a young family in the middle of a shinto ceremony.
Late morning saw Nara Park swarming with tourists heading in to Todaiji. The deer were eating up the attention, and were nibbling anything they could on passers-by with deer crackers: clothing, papers, cameras, backpacks…it all might be a deer cracker, and therefore potentially delicious. Of course we fed them deer crackers before we left, and were subsequently nibbled upon.
Arashiyama Monkey Park (Iwatayama)
After curry lunch in Kyoto station, we took the train out to Arashiyama for the monkey park and bamboo grove. We picked our way through souvenir shop-laden avenues and crossed a popular river, backed by beautiful fall colors.
Up until this point, I had ignored the fact that the monkey park was called Iwatayama. Yama. Like mountain. Nooooooooo!!
This was going to be up another mountain, the very thing we told ourselves we would avoid today.
The brochure for the monkey park assured us it was a 20 minute walk up about 180m to see the monkeys. We huffed and puffed and switchbacked up the mountain, calves already sore from yesterday’s surprisingly mountainous adventure.
At least we knew there would be cute monkeys up the mountain, and we’d probably get to feed them before we rolled ourselves back down the mountain, which was starting to become a realistic proposal over walking.
And monkeys they were! Japanese snow monkeys, with red butts and red faces and fluffy fur. Monkeys scampering everywhere, jumping on trees, picking bugs off one another, sticking their hands through the feeding station to receive fruit or peanuts, and generally going about their monkey business.
Arashiyama Bamboo Grove
This surely could not be a mountain. Right? Right? Right. We opted to detour through a quiet park instead of wind through the busy main street to get to the bamboo grove.
It wasn’t large, but it was beautiful. Girls in kimono wandered through the grove’s single path, taking selfies. The inside was dark and kung-fu like. I braced myself to fight, but no adversaries appeared (or there were incredibly effective adversaries present and I never saw them).
Tenryuu-ji (天龍寺) and gardens
Our last stop was entirely accidental. Tenryuu-ji was at the entrance to the bamboo grove. The gardens were immaculate, with labeled plants, mossy rocks, and trickling streams. At the center was a large koi pond framed with a raked zen garden.
To round out our day of animals, we backtracked to the cat souvenir shop and I bought all of the things before we returned to our Air B&B and collapsed into our futons.
Tomorrow, we’ll do exploring within Kyoto: Kiyomizudera, Ginkaku-ji, and many other shrines. And mountains, I’m sure, because why not?