Nara

Nara is a city north east of Osaka and it's home to free roaming deer and the biggest Buddha statue I've ever seen!

The deer were great. You can walk right up to them and even buy packs of deer biscuits and feed them. Some of them are pretty aggresive, though. So watch out who you feed. And stay away from the babies. The mommies don't like strangers talking to their kids.


The boy deer have their horns ground down to lower the human death rate (I assume). That's kinda sad to me. Having a certain part of your anatomy ground down to a nub to make you less dangerous. But maybe that's not such a bad idea for some.


I'm not a Buddhist but I can still appreciate the presence given off by the huge Buddha. They even have a window in the shrine so you can see his head from the outside.
I'm often confused but the different Buddha statues. Certain ones are skinny and others are fat. Maybe it's that the skinny ones represent his younger self and the fat ones are from his later days.

Like Elvis.

Or maybe I'm thinking of two different figures from two different religions.


Then in the resting area there was this guy who started talking to us. He gave us some sweet bean paste sandwiches and apples. His name was Jun Saito. I generally got a good impression from the people of Japan. There's an underlying polite demeanor most people have. I never felt awkward asking for help there.