Today we visited Nara the first capital of Japan, about an hour away from Kyoto and specifically, the Todaiji Buddhist temple, another UNESCO world Heritage site.
The main entry gate was massive - a huge wooden structure with enormous wooden guardian statues. Quite impressive.
We also saw LOTS and LOTS of the famous Nara deer (there are about 1,300 in the preserved area), which are believed to be messengers from god, and therefore sacred - even if a bit annoying. Some of them nod their heads while begging for food, so they appear to be bowing, so all over the temple grounds we saw people bowing to the deer, and the deer nodding their heads. Unfortunately, they get aggressive if you stop feeding them.
Inside the main gate was the huge temple, which houses the biggest Buddha in Japan. There was some kind of festival today, so there were lots of monks around, as well as lots of school kids. The monks were conducting some sort of prayer service in front of the Buddha.
The Buddha was amazing … we took a lot of photos. The Buddha's right hand had the gesture of “pushing away fear”, and the left was “receiving the suffering of the people”. This made the Buddha, which was both offering hope and relieving suffering, a very soothing and enormous presence.
We learned a lot about the history of the temple, from its first construction in the 7th century to the current building that was built in the 1800s. The temple had been destroyed by fire several times in its history. In front of the temple was a large bronze lantern dating from the 700's which was the only surviving part of the original temple that had survived the fires.
There were also gigantic “guardian” statues in each corner of the temple and golden (bronze) bodhisattvas on either side of the huge Buddha in the center.
After we looked at everything and took a lot of photos of Buddhas monks and deer, we headed to lunch. There were two hot pots with flames under them, one with wagyu beef and mushrooms, and the other with cabbage and chicken and noodles as well as several other dishes. Pretty impressive.
As we never do just one or two things on the trip, our next “learning and discovery” was a visit to a Samurai Kenbu Studio. Once the samurai era ended in the 1860s, the martial art of sword fighting continued to be practiced, eventually evolving into kenbu, the art form of sword dance performance that we saw.
A young man demonstrated a formal Samurai dance that told a story, then came back and explained what the various moves meant and how they conveyed the story. He was very funny as well as informative. Later we were invited to get up on the stage and perform typical Samurai moves. Such fun!
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