Day Five - 8/27/09

On Thursday, we checked out of the Hotel Granvia and started heading towards our next destination, Osaka. We planned on making a few stops that day, and we didn't feel like carrying our bags around so we used a Takuhaibin (luggage delivery) service at the hotel to send our luggage separately from ourselves. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but it takes a day usually to get luggage between places, so be sure you keep everything you need for the next 24 hours in what you carry around (we didn't).

From Kyoto, we took a train to Fushimi, where we visited the Fushimi Inari-taisha, which contains a number of paths lined with gates. While I had never visited Central Park during the "The Gates" exhibit, these gates in Fushimi reminded me of the pictures that I had seen of it. According to the Wikipedia entry on The Gates (which of course is uncited), the exhibit was inspired by the tradition of Japanese torii gates. Anyways, all this means is that I skipped the copycat and saw the original.

From the shrine, we headed down towards a town, across one train tracks into a playground and tried to figure out our next steps. Turns out we were hungry, and it was time for our visit to a McDonalds to get a Mega Tomago. My brother had me order, which was an unsuccessful disaster, and he got it all on video so he could laugh and embarrass me.

It wasn't as big as the photos suggested it would be, and it was honestly a lot like a Big Mac with the egg portion of an Egg McMuffin and some extra dressing on it, but it wasn't bad either. Unfortunately I got some of the dressing on my shirt and shorts, and like I said earlier we did not have our suitcases with us so I was walking around for the rest of the day/night with Mega Tomago sauce on my shorts.

From McDonalds, we headed to the Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum, which was not where they made Sake, but they had a number of exhibits on the history and process of making Sake. Had we planned better, we might have been able to get a tour of an actual Sake factory, but we didn't and yet it was still informative and fascinating.

First the museum had a fountain that contained water that they had used (or were using) for making Sake (Fushimi has some of the cleanest water in Japan). The second portion of the tour was the part I was most interested in, the process for making sake. While I probably could have learned this all on-line, with the actual tools next to the explanation things really made sense. The third part of the tour showed ancient and then more-recent sake related items and photographs. The final part of the tour was a quick tasting, along with two cans of the museum's sake, which was later confiscated by the Japanese airport security.

From the Sake Museum, we headed back towards the train station, and along the way my brother spotted a tatami floor maker. He showed off a bit of his work to us (see photo), which was pretty cool for my brother as he hadn't seen it being done before.

We got on a train to Nara, and made it there shortly afterwards. We walked out of the station and stopped in a small little cafe on the corner for a rest with a quick iced coffee and a chocolate croissant. Although you think of tea when you think of Japan, they are actually one of the biggest coffee drinkers in the world, and you can find really good coffee anywhere.

We continued up the hill and made our way to Kofuku-ji, and we took a few photos before heading back to the main road. Nara is famous for the many deer that live there, and there are a number of vendors that sell biscuits that tourists purchase to have them feed the deer.

There are a few observations that I noted about this:

1) The deer are aware that there is food for sale
2) The biscuit vendors are aware that the deer are aware that there is food for sell
3) The typical tourist generally is not aware of previous two points
4) The deer are regarded as messengers of the gods in the Shinto religion
4) The deer have antlers

So the biscuits are wrapped with two pieces of paper, and when the vendor twists the biscuits to unwrap the paper, it makes a distinct cracking noise. A noise which the deer are fully aware of, and if they aren't already harassing another biscuit feeding tourist they generally will head in your direction. Once they are close enough, they may prod you with their antlers to feed them. Generally the ones that prodded me were the ones that got the most food, as I didn't want to find out what happened past prodding. Obviously this behavior works out well for the deer as well.

It was really fun to feed the deer. Just be ready for an unexpected feeling of fear. Also, see the photo to the left, which is an actual sign they have posted near the deer. Since I can't read Japanese, I'm guessing they have gotten rowdy in the past with tourists, and (potentially) utilize the awesome power of red lightning emanating from their skulls.

From the deer we kept going up the street to Todai-ji, which houses the Daibutsu-den (Great Buddha Hall). The Daibutsu-den is the world's largest wooden structure and it houses the largest Buddha statue in the world. It's quite impressive. There's an additional number of large statues, and a hole in one of the pieces of wood my brother claimed that if you pass through it, you could fit in the Buddha statue's nose.

I purchased a charm for my wife at the temple to help prevent future traffic accidents, and we made our way back to the Nara train station to meet up with my brother's girlfriend and head to the Swissotel Nankai in Osaka.