7-15-19 Shorts-eating deer, giant Buddha and John’s B-day

Day 29. The pace doesn’t let up as we have a 6:30am breakfast wake-up call and on the bus. The first stop is a Nara, a massive park at the foot of Mt. Wakakusa, which was the capital of Japan in the 8th century. The unique aspect of Nara is that there are what seems to be a million deer roaming throughout the entire town. The deer are considered messengers of the Gods and have been designated a national treasure. You can buy “deer crackers” for $1.50 and feed to deer. Yes - it has tourist trap written all over it but the kids are super excited.

When the deer outnumber the people with deer crackers by about 20:1, the math says you are going to have 20 deers fighting to get your cracker. Sure enough, that dynamic produces a population of super aggressive deer when it comes to deer crackers. I am trying to spread the love by giving a cracker to different deer. The deer in front of me is not particularly keen on that idea and starts eating my shorts. Seriously, dude! I have 3 pairs of shorts that have to last 12 months and your eating one of them - not cool!

I look over and Justin has run out of crackers and being chased down by four deer who are apparently incensed that he didn’t buy more deer crackers. Our tour guide says something about hunting deer. At first, I was thinking that would like shooting fish in a barrel. But now I am thinking this might not be an acceptable defensive strategy to save my shorts if it comes down to that. Although something tells me the Gods might not be too happy with me if I take out Bambi, their cute, cuddly deer messenger.

Having survived the deer, we make it to a Todaji, the Buddhist temple complex (UNESCO site) that was once one of the powerful Seven Great Temples. Its Great Buddha Hall housed the world’s largest bronze stature of the Buddha Vairocana know in Japanese as Daibutsu. It is very impressive and somewhat intimidating at the same time.

We leave Nara and go to the Fushimi Inari Shrine, the most important of the several thousand shrines dedicated to Inari, the Shinto God of rice / farming / agriculture. It is famous for its thousands of vermillion tori gates which straddle a network of trails behinds its main building. The trails lead into the wooded forest of the sacred Mount Inari, which stands 233 meters tall.

John tells me that the reason there as so many tore gates is because families paid donations to have a gate with their family names inscribed on it when it was the shrine was being built. Everyone donated for fear of Inari wiping out their crops in retribution if they didn't give money. Now that sounds like a pretty effective fundraising strategy to me.

The day’s tour ends with the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove / Forest (UNESCO site). The forest is a dense thicket of bamboo trees (16 square KM) with a pedestrian path through the forest that leads to several temples and shrines in the foothills of the surrounding mountains. Very cool and Game of Thrones Haunted Forest like. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a white walker popped out from behind a bamboo tree and took out the poor tour guide.

Today is John’s birthday and it is the first birthday we celebrate on our trip. Japan was one of the top countries on his list so it worked out well. We let John pick the restaurant and after conferring with the rest of the group, elects for Thank God Its Friday (TGIF) which I think reflects that the kids are missing American restaurants just a little. John dress in a kimono and Japanese head band for dinner. Most of the other patrons are Japanese and when they see John, I’m guessing they are thinking “wait, the American tourist is wearing a Japanese outfit and the Japanese people are dressed like American tourists.” John is happy and that’s what matters.