Japan 2016: Day in Nara !!

We traveled to Nara to spend our days walking around this city! This place is similar to Kyoto in the sense that it holds a lot of ancient culture. Kyoto and Nara were both at point in time the capital of Japan. Today the capital of Japan is Tokyo. During our visit to Nara we had a guide who took us to popular sites across Nara Park. Then after our tour we were able to pick and choose what we wanted to see/do. Our guided tour was amazing! We first went to Kofukuji Temple, then Todaiji Temple, and lastly Kasuga Taisha Shrine.

Kofuku-ji Temple

During our visit to this temple we learned the history of Buddhism and Shintoism. Here are some of the differences from my understanding: Buddhism worships Buddha while Shintoism worships many different symbolic gods, Buddhism migrated from India while Shintoism is the native religion of Japan, Buddhism has Pagodas and Shintoism has Torri's (gate's) to show that this is a holy place. Our guide also told us how the deer here are considered sacred and in the past times if someone in the area had killed a deer, they were to be executed. Across Nara Park there are around 1300 deer! These deer walk right up to the tourists and it was quite the difference from the deer in America.

Todai-ji Temple

This temple is home to the "Giant Buddha." It was very cool to see how grand this statue really is. Here we learned a bit about what these buildings did to the community while being built. We also got some insight on how many times these buildings were rebuilt. From war/lightning many of these wooden temples have had to be rebuilt due to fire.

Kasuga Taisha Shrine

This shrine is known because of its 3000 lanterns. The picture on the left shows an alter where people would go to worship the symbol. I really like going these temples and shrines because they are often surrounded by nature. These temples and shrines are very peaceful/blissful places to visit. It is so hard to relate these places to anything in America, so having this exposure has been a blessing.