Today I took a day trip out to Nara, a small town about 45 minutes by express train from Kyoto. Nara has a large park that is home to a number of shrines and temples as well as a huge number of tame deer. The deer are all over the place, so many that you wonder how they don’t starve until you notice vendor after vendor selling small packages of crackers for 150 yen that you can feed to the deer. Embarrassingly, I thought the first old lady I ran into was selling some sort of local snack food so I picked up a package, only to notice the deer picture on the wrapping - doh!
The park is a straight shot from the train station, much like Himeji or even Nikko, so finding my way around was quite easy. Once you make it to the park there are ample signs all around the park to help you from getting lost, which is nice since the park is quite large.
Once again, it was students everywhere I went. Today again a number of school kids had the assignment of trying out some basic english with foreigners and collecting their signatures. I must have looked like an easy mark since I ended up signing a good 25+ workbooks in the first hour or two I was there. In return, I forced a couple of the more rambunctious groups pose for a photo.
On the way back to the main street from the park I ran into a mother walking a small boy on a quiet side street. Apparently the boy hadn’t seen a foreigner before because he called for his mother and proceeded to point at me. I gave him a friendly wave and a konnichiwa when I walked by but I couldn’t crack his confused stare as I walked by.
For lunch I had okonomiyaki again, this time at a place where they cook it right up on your table instead of bringing it out and using the table grill just to keep it warm like they did in Osaka. I got to choose the sauces that went on top and had them hold off a bit on the sweeter sauce. It turned out much better than when I had it before, although with a full stomach and all the sun I got again today I came very very close to falling asleep on the train ride back to Kyoto.
After coming home and doing my usual email/flickr/blog routine I headed down the the underground mall again for a little something for dinner. I swung by a sushi place that was so-so by US standards. I picked a combination by picture that included salmon roe, tuna, salmon, and (raw) shrimp amongst some other whitefish that I couldn’t really identify. When I got the plate there was something I wasn’t expecting - a thin piece of something that was bright blue. I have no idea what it was, but it was kinda tasty.
Tomorrow I head to Hiroshima where I don’t think I’ll have any internet access for a while so the next update may be a couple of days from now.