Japan - The next day - Nara

Todai-ji, Nara.

The bus ride to Nara was alright. You can only get so comfortable on a bus. Though this one was specifically geared to overnight travel. There were only 3 seats across and there was a bit more space in front and behind so you could lean back without intruding on anyone else's space. They even provided slippers for each passenger to use if you so desired. Just to make things more comfortable.

The bus went directly from Tokyo to Nara without any stops. I arrived at my stop at the Kintetsu Nara Station at 6:35 a.m. It was the final stop on the route (one after the stop at the Nara JR Terminal). So, again, I had a lot of time to kill. Most of the temples didn't opened until 8:00 or 9:00.

The first temple I planned on visiting was Todai-ji. It's probably only a kilometre or so from where I got off the bus. I was able to pass the time taking pictures of the many small deer in Nara Park along the way there. They're pretty much tame. You can approach them and they won't run away.

I was even able to pat a few of them on the head. They didn't seem to enjoy it so much like I thought they would. I thought they would like it the same way dogs do. Most of the deer just walked away when I started rubbing their heads.

I visited four temples in total in Nara - Todai-ji, Kasuga Taisha, Yakushi-ji and Toshodai-ji. Unfortunately, being off-season, many of the temples were under partial renovation and/or had certain areas closed off to visitors. That was really annoying. Especially since I discovered that after having paid to get in.

I was pretty much done temple hopping by 3:00 p.m. I had to rush around because, at this time of the year (late fall), the sun sets early. Not good for photos at all. There are a lot of heavy shadows that make for terrible shots.

Thankfully I was able to find a bus (#70 and 72) from the east side (Todai-ji and Kasuga Taisha) that took me the 7-kilometre trek to Yakushi-ji and Toshodai-ji in west Nara for Y170. That saved me valuable sunlight time (otherwise I would have walked).

I did walk back from Toshodai-ji to the JR Station (some 4-kilometres away) after finishing there. I had all afternoon/evening to kill, my night bus not scheduled to leave until after 9:00 p.m. That left me an hour and a half, on average, to walk each kilometre.

I have to tell you, unlike Shinjuku, there's not so much to take pictures of at the JR Station in Nara. I tried dragging it out, but it was pretty, pretty boring. Four hours of walking around the station or just sitting in the waiting room. What can you do?