Japan – Nara, Todai-ji Temple, The Great Buddha, Uji tea farming

The breakfast in the hotel we are staying at hasn’t been as good as the other hotels. We love the Japanese cuisine for breakfast, and for some reason, this hotel offers mostly western food, mainly a lot of bread. It’s a bit disappointing.

After breakfast we left on the bus for Nara Park, which is renowned for its free-roaming deer and world famous temples. You can purchase little biscuits to feed the deer, but I didn’t do that, because I was told by my friend who had already visited the park – once you feed the deer, you can’t get away from them.

When we first entered the park, the deer greeted us looking for food, but we just kept walking and so they finally dispersed. They looked a bit mangy, perhaps because it is mating season, and they might have been biting each other. There were signs up that cautioned to watch out, because during mating season, the deer can kick, butt, bite, or knock you down (yikes!), but actually, they all seemed pretty calm and tamed.

On the grounds where the deer roam free, is the Todaiji Temple, which dates back to 728. When you walk through the Nandaimon Gate in front of the temple, you are confronted on either side by Kongo Rikishi Statues, that guard the approach to the Great Buddha. The hall that houses the Buddha, is one of the worlds largest wooden structures and the Great Buddha itself stands about 50’ high and is cast from over 400 tons of bronze.

After visiting the temple, we strolled the grounds and just appreciated the beautiful sunny day and the beautiful scenery. We then had a tempura rice bowl and udon soup for lunch, before boarding the bus to the Uji tea farm.

The owner of the tea farm took us around the grounds and we saw the bushes where he has different varieties of tea growing. Most of his tea farm was on the other side of the mountain, and that is where he harvests and makes the different teas for sale. His green tea is the most famous.

After seeing the machines that he uses to make the tea leaves for sale, we had an opportunity to grind tea leaves ourselves, using a device with a handle that you had to turn to grind the leaves. It was hard work, and took quite a bit of time for all the leaves to be ground. When all the leaves were ground, we scooped them up and put them in a tin can and we went to another area to make our matcha green tea. I was able to froth the ground tea leaves when we participated in the formal tea ceremony in Tokyo, so once again, I took my bamboo whisk and did a great job frothing. The owner nodded and told me it was perfect. (I’m such a show-off. LOL!)

We drank our matcha tea, after turning the bowl 180 degrees, and we sprinkled the leftover ground matcha on vanilla ice cream that we were offered, and that actually was really good!

After the tea ceremony, we visited the Nishini Market, a narrow, five block long shopping street lined by more than one hundred shops and restaurants. It was a mad house, with crowds of people looking at all the fish, and vegetables, and deciding what they would like to eat. You had to practically push your way through the throngs. Japan is extremely clean and one of the reasons why that is so, is that it is an unwritten rule that you never walk while eating. You must find a place to either sit or stand to consume your food if you are out and about. Also, you will have a tough time finding any garbage receptacle, since everyone is supposed to take their garbage home with them to dispose of.

After the crowds of people in the first five long blocks, we finally arrived at the shopping area, with tons of stores offering everything you can think of from upscale leather bags, to T-shirts, to chopsticks, to men’s suits, and on and on and on. It was fun to experience, but not being a shopper, I was just as happy when we finally were outside, and walking back to the hotel.

We took the subway from the hotel to a restaurant to enjoy some Kyoto cuisine and then it started to rain so we took cabs back to the hotel.
It was a wonderful day!