Day 14 - Koyasan to Nara

Today started with two more Buddhist ceremony, intermixed with a Japanese breakfast. Firstly, at 7am, we started the day with a Morning Ceremony that involved three monks and a lot of chanting for about 30 mins. We were the fed and at 8am, we watched a fire ceremony, where a single monk burnt a lot of kindling and threw some leaves and herbs on the fire. They also burnt our prayer sticks that we each wrote wishes on. All very dim and mysterious with lots of incense.

That was the official end of our visit and we finished packing up and left the monastery about 8.45am to catch a bus, furnicular, train, train and train to Nara, where we walked to our accommodation to drop our packs, just after 1pm.

Nara is renowned for lots of deers that wander around harassing innocent bystanders for food, which people are encouraged to give them (prepuchsed crackers). Walking around watching this, my mind was rebelling, thinking 'don't feed the animals!!!'

The deer park is part of the Kasugayama Primeval Forest, so we spent an hour or two wandering through that, looking at trees, temples and tombstones (actually they were more like shrines, but that doesn't start with T...).

On our way back to the guest house to check in, we found a nifty kimino shop where we got great deals on a second hand yukata each, which we are currently sitting around in.

Dinner tonight was baked omelette with rice, kind of like a baked risotto, which was very yummy. Lunch had been an equally yummy, but different, soys bean meat and cashew Chinese stir fry. We also tried our first matcha flavoured soft serve ice cream when in the park, so I am a bit full now....Read more