Osaka-Nara

Randy's new apartment (well, to us) was larger than the last (can't imagine smaller), so it wasn't as hard for him to get past us crashed out on the floor and get to work. We got up, spent an obscene amount of money at Mister Donut for 2 teeny cups of alright coffee. Actually it was very good, the fact that we paid almost $10 Canuck for coffee and donuts detracted from it's yumminess.



From Umeda we took the Hankyu line to Nara, an old capital about 45 minutes from Osaka. We decided to skip any local transit and figured we could check everything out that we wanted to on foot. As Craig's feet were starting to freak out a bit, they were swollen and hurty, we took it a bit easy. We headed to the Nigatsu-do, passing the 5 story Pagoda at Kofukuji Temple on the way. This took us through part of Nara's famous deer park, where the animals run free during the day. At this point we just saw the signs. Nigatsu do is on a hill, and took a long rock staircase to get up there, and it offered some great views of Nara, including the Pagoda.



Then we wandered back through some parks along the river, making our way to the Todaiji Temple complex, one of the main reasons we headed here. This complex includes the Daibutsu, the world's largest gilded bronze Buddha, measuring 15 meters (49 feet) in height . It is housed in an all-wood building, the Daibutsu-den, which at 48 meters (157 feet) in height, the largest wooden building in the world. Though only a couple of meters larger than the Kamakura statue, the fact that it was in this building made it that much more impressive.



This building features large wooden beams stretching up to the ceiling, one of which has a square knothole cut into it. It is said (by someone, apparently) that if you can fit through this knothole that you are guaranteed enlightenment. We found this area of the building fairly easily, it was surrounded by a throng of people, mainly Japanese tourists, making quite a racket. They were on the one side, pushing friends through the knothole, and on the other side pulling as hard as they could. We saw old ladies laughing so hard that they were crying. I was able to squeeze through, and scored a good bruise to prove it, which did impede some record shopping. I guess there is a price to pay for enlightenment, but the entertainment value alone seems worth it.

After marking our notebooks with the temple stamp we realized how hungry we were. There were a couple of veggie restaurants in some of the travel books we had consulted so we set off to look for those. They were all gone, with one around the corner just closing a couple of months ago. We found this out at an amazing place we stumbled on, called Raku. The owner was super nice and spoke great English. She served up yummy curry and we said we would recommend this to anyone heading to Nara. On the way back to the train we had some super fresh green tea and brown rice flour manju. So awesome.



We took the train back to Osaka and met up with Randy at Time Bomb, in Amer-mura, also running into Ben from Hamilton. From Time Bomb we walked over to Shin's shop, Punk And Destroy. It was great to meet him again and trade some records. However, we found the day brought less records than we expected and found no cool shoes to buy. Drat. Shin was apologetic, saying that another North American tourist was recently through town and picked up alot of what Craig was looking for.

Randy had to head to Kobe for band practice, and we made plans to meet up with him there ahead of the show. There were a couple bands playing in Juso, but we decided against it to give Craig's tender tootsies a rest. We took the opportunity to check out this Mexican restaurant steps from Randy's called Tacos Nopal. It sounds bonkers to say that I have had the best authentic Mexican eats I have ever tasted in Osaka, but that is the case. The teeny shop was run by a Mexican grandma who really only speaks Spanish and Japanese. The fresh corn tortillas and pupusas were melt in your mouth, and the selection of Mexican beer, Modello Negra even, great too. I wish I could eat here every night for the rest of my life.