Old friends reunited...

Yesterday I journeyed to Nara to meet up with a friend I haven't seen in 10 years!  Actually, not just a friend but a sorority sister from my year at UNLV.  Shiho lives in Nagoya, so we decided to meet somewhere in between.  Turns out she hadn't visited Nara in 20 years.

We met for a delicious lunch of Okonomiyaki and Yakisoba, dishes traditional for Osaka and the Kansai region (should've taken a picture).  Then we wandered around for a few hours.  Our first attraction was Nara Park, home to hundreds of deer.   They are not like the deer back home: shorter, stalkier and still have their spots.  They are a national treasure and regarded as "heavenly animals, protecting the city and country", because it is believed a mythological god arrived on a white deer to protect the newly built capital.  Up until almost 1700, it was actually punishable by death to slaughter one.  For the most part they are tame, and vendors sell deer biscuits.  There are signs though warning that the deer are wild animals and showed pictures that it was possible they would knock you down, head butt you, bite you, and there was even one of the deer stealing a woman's purse.  It was interesting to see that the deer don't go after the biscuits sitting there at the vendor stands, but the moment the biscuits are in the hand of a human...

Shiho barely got the biscuits over to me without the deer stealing them from her.  Even just sitting on a park bench we would be confronted by deer.  They tried to steal Shiho's tea from her purse and twice they stole the map out of mine.  Only about half the map remained after two tug-of-war battles with the deer, but at least it was the part showing the locations of the shrines :)

We also visited the Toodai-ji and the Daibutsuden within.  The last picture is of an old model of the grounds scaled 1:50.

Shiho and I made a donation and were able to sign a roof tile.  

We went to the Nara national museum afterwards.  Since it was so hot, it felt nice to walk around in air-conditioning for a couple hours.  There was a special exhibit on Xuanxang's 30,000-kilometer Buddhist pilgrimage to India.  On display was half of the Genjoo Sanzoo e, a pictorial biogrpahy of the priest's life.  We also saw several scrolls of the Daihannyakyo, The Great Wisdom Sutra, which were brought back from India and translated to Chinese.  Several ancient Buddhist statues were on display at the museum as well.  After our long day of wandering around Nara, we ended the day with dinner at a conveyer belt sushi restaurant.

We parted ways at the train station, but we will get to see each other at least once more when Jesse and I stop in Nagoya for the night on the way to Tokyo.