Anywho, the next big event was the so-called "silver week." Japan has an annual string of holiday in April/May called Golden Week. A lot of people go traveling and it's a pretty big deal. Well we had three holidays in the fall line up this year, and so people were dubbing it "silver week." This meant I had a five day weekend (yay government job!). Unfortunately, I didn't have re-entry permit yet, or I might have accompanied Lauren on her trip to Korea and visited Wallin. But I still made a decent time of it. Jon and I decided to take a trip to Nara, which was the capital city a long, long time ago. It's main claims to fame are the giant Buddha which is housed in Todaiji, the largest wooden building in the world. Apparently they had to rebuild it after a fire, and the original building was even larger. This is hard to believe, as the current structure is an incredibly impressive sight to behold.
On our way to Nara we had a couple transfers and it was maybe 3 hours total one way.
At the last transfer, a rather frazzled older foreign lady came up to us and asked us if this was the train to Nara. We assured her it was the correct train and ended up chatting with her all the way to Nara. She was apparently here on some military related program, but she basically is assigned to different countries for 60 days at a time and runs programs/classes/workshops or something of the like for the troops. It sounded like a pretty neat gig and good way to see the world. We parted ways at the station since Jon and I had yet to eat lunch. We were looking for tempura, but ended up bailing once we realized it was going to be $20 for a lunch that had a few pieces of tempura and wasn't going to fill us up. We grabbed lunch at a random place that had some tasty looking fried foods. My lunch consisted of some pork, lotus root, and another random vegetable. The real awesome part of this place was that rather than the standard green tea or genmai tea, they had a pitcher of ice cold rooibos tea, a variety of red tea which I absolutely love. On top of that they even had thousand island dressing, which was an unexpected little taste of America. On that note, though, I am going through ranch dressing withdrawals. Mmm...
After lunch we headed toward Todaiji and Nara park. While wandering the grounds outside of Todaiji, we happened upon some sort of event, as a bunch of chairs were set up with a number of folks already waiting in their seats. We stood around trying to figure out what it was when some dude came up and explained to me that they were doing a demonstration of the yagi, a traditional spear-like weapon that also has a couple small blades perpendicular to the pole. Apparently they only do this demo once a year and it was happening in 10 minutes. Jon and I thought we had hit the jackpot and promptly grabbed seats. The program said they would be demoing the 14 basic techniques, 14 "secret" techniques, and then 7 combination techniques. And this wasn't free sparring in any sense of the word, they a bunch of very rehearsed exchanges, which would be fine, if they were using actual weapons. Instead they were using completely wooden practice weapons, which took away from the excitement. Also, about as complicated as it got was parry, thrust. I'm pretty sure the parry-thrust combo isn't a "secret" technique. Sorry, guys. None of the demos really seem to show off a whole ton of skill, so it was overall rather disappointing. But we did have a bit of sunburn to show for it after an hour in the sun.
We hit up a small museum after that, and then headed into Nara Park proper, where we met up with Nara's other claim to fame, "wild" deer. So there are a ton of deer roaming all over Nara park and at this point they are all extremely domesticated, since the big thing to do there is buy these special crackers and feed them to the deer. Well it seems over the years of domestication the deer have developed a sense of entitlement. The minute you are even in line to buy the crackers, the deer are on your ass like white on rice. And they are aggressive. While just waiting in line I had one biting and pulling on my back pocket flap, and then he started headbutting my leg. And this dude still had little antler nubs that packed a punch. The little bugger even landed a glancing blow to the digital camera in my cargo pocket. Thankfully it still worked fine. Once I obtained the cracker I had an "entourage" of 10-12 deer and had to work quickly and carefully to feed them all without getting my fingers nipped.
I managed to get rid of the crackers without too much incident, but soon after saw a Japanese guy who made the mistake of not holding his ground. It was quite the sight to see this dude throwing crackers while running away from a pack of deer.
We also came upon one deer who had a glazed over eye. It was a little freaky, but the deer also looked kind of badass because of it. I think that deer might be the Highlander...or something. I also respected the older deer who just sat there, not begging or headbutting for food. Their jaded, stoic expressions said "I'm too old for this shit."
We then hit up Todaiji itself, which is an amazing sight from the outside. The sheer scale of it is mind numbing. Upon entering we checked out the main attraction, the giant Buddha. It was definitely very cool, and very big, but I saw a boatload of buddha while in China, a number of which were more impressive. The background behind the buddha was quite intricate and well done and offered more to look at. As we wandered toward the back of the buddha, there was a relatively long line that had formed. One of the pillars in this room has a square shaped hole through the base of it. They say if you can crawl through this small square tunnel you will have good fortune. It looked pretty small, but taking pride in being a scrawny pale guy, I had to give it shot. So I probably waited about 20 minutes for a chance to crawl through a hole. Yeah, sounds enthralling, I know. While waiting I saw a number children make it through, and one adult made it about halfway, but then needed his buddy to pull on his arms to get out. After seeing that I had some worries. But when I got down there I went in on the diagonal and scooted through without a problem. Thanks to Jon for the camerawork on this one.
After that we headed up an incline path to this shrine that had an incredible view of Nara. We chilled up there for quite awhile soaking in the view. Then we went exploring some of the forest paths, and found a section lined with stone lanterns, which was very cool, if not a bit surreal and eerie. It felt like a bit a time warp and served as another one of those "yup, I'm back in Japan" moments.
At this point we had worked up quite an appetite and decided to grab dinner on the way back to the station. We had initially thought of staying a night, but to be honest, we covered everything we wanted to see there in one day. We grabbed dinner at a random restaurant where I had Mega Omu Rice-flavored rice covered with egg and demiglaze sauce topped off with some fried goodies.
We didn't know the train schedule well, but left early enough where we thought we'd be safe, even with two transfers (one at Kyoto, another at Maibara). The Kyoto transfer was fine, but when we got a Maibara, there were a ton of people waiting on the platform, which is very suspect, given the size of the station. It turns out the trains were running 20-25 minutes late, which pretty much never happens. It was definitely my first time experiencing such a heinous violation of the time schedule in Japan. We looked at the schedule and soon realized that the time delay was actually a godsend, as without it, we would have missed the last train back to Ogaki. I wasn't anticipating the last train back to be 9pm, that's for sure. So we narrowly dodged having to spend the night in po-dunk Maibara, without a place to stay (there is next to nothing at this stop).
Obviously a bit tired due to turning Nara into a day trip, I just chilled on Sunday, but Jon had mentioned how the weather would be perfect for disc golf. And in our handy little region guide it mentions that a nearby country actually has a course although it is, quote, "a little smaller than those in America." I was surprised the concept of disc golf had even made it over here, so we decided to make that our adventure on Monday.
We took a train about a half hour north to the small town of Ikeda. We had hoped that since they have a course, somewhere in the town along the way to the course, there would be a place selling discs, as in America, nearby gas stations often sell them. When we actually arrived in Ikeda and started walking a few minutes, we quickly lost hope. There was next to nothing. It was a good 25 minute walk from the station, and along the way we stumbled upon one of the most ridiculous (yet awesome) things I've ever seen...and egg vending machine. Yeah, you know you've hit the country when you see a freaking EGG VENDING MACHINE. I still can't get over it.
We eventually reached the sign for the disc golf course we had seen in our guide, but were stil sans discs. So we decided to stop at this nearby cafe to get some soft serve ice cream. We were pleasantly surprised since they had green tea ice cream, which was made from the tea grown in Ikeda town itself, and according to the menu, is a variety you can only get at that cafe. And it was definitely some of the best green tea ice cream I have ever had. We then asked the lady running the store about where we could buy discs. She had no clue but suggested we inquire at the nearby sports complex. We did so and found out there really wasn't a place to buy discs, but that they rented out frisbees for free. So although not proper discs, it was still a nice deal.
We get to the park to find that the "course" is 6 holes randomly strewn about a bit of open green space, which is shared by many families and couples tossing baseballs, having a picnic, or just laying around enjoying the weather. That and the "holes" were maybe 70-80ft long whereas a standard hole should be 300+. So it was a bit disappointing, but we still had fun with it, making up our own "super holes." I let one toss get away from me, and wouldn't you know it, it was heading straight for this couple lying on a blanket. My instinct was to yell "fore!" but I quickly aborted realizing they won't have a clue what I'm saying, let alone know it is directed at them. So I just watched in half-horror as the disc nailed the guy right in ribs. 10,000 points! I ran over and apologized profusely, the whole while his girlfriend/wife was laughing her head. She seemed to think it was the funniest thing in the world. I didn't feel quite as bad after seeing her reaction. Later they got up from their blanket and were gone for quite a while, leading Jon and I to posit that was probably getting some sympathy action after getting hit-so I basically did him a favor.
The park itself was top-notch, and the weather was amazing. It's not often you have that much open space in Japan, so it was a nice change of pace. I took the opportunity to practice a little capoeira, complete with music via my iPhone-that thing sure is handy sometimes! We eventually called it a day and headed back to Ogaki. The last two days of silver week were spent chilling and relaxing after we realized our Wednesday plan of heading out east to a waterfall we could jump off of required a car to get to the destination.
Current Update: I attempted to make Ad's peanut butter pie. I couldn't get the cream whipped properly by hand, so the filling wasn't quite as fluffy. I brought into work this Friday (I would've brought it on my actual birthday if it weren't for the typhoon) and a couple of my co-workers mistook the oreo crust for black sesame. Odd.
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