Enlightenment and Deer Feeding at Nara

Yesterday, Trisha and I took the train to Nara, Japan's first real capital. We first visited the Kofuku-ji temple which has a five story pagoda that is a symbol of the city [there seems to be a "Hello Kitty goes to ___" theme here in Japan. In every city they have souvenior crap with Hello Kitty and whatever the city's symbol is. So in Himeji, there is Hello Kitty and the castle keychains and sweat rags (really they're washcloths, but the Japanese use them to wipe the sweat off their faces so we call them sweat rags). In Nara, it was Hello Kitty and the pagoda/deer/Buddha trinkets. I should start a collection!]

("Hello Trisha goes to Nara")
But back to topic - we walked on towards the temple which houses the Great Buddha, and on the way were attacked by aggressive deer looking for food! These deer are another symbol of Nara and in pre-Buddhist times were considered messengers of the gods. They appear to have a status and attitude similiar to cows in India. They know they're sacred and they're not afraid to remind you of that! We bought some deer cakes to feed them and they went wild! One actually jumped up and put his foot on my chest when I held the biscuits over my head! Another bit Trisha's shirt! It was incredibly bold for deer! There are about 1200 deer in the city and they roam freely, on the sidewalks along busy streets and in the walkways to the tourist destinations (where they know they will encounter tourists with snacks!)

Finally, we fought our way through crowds of deer and the tourists feeding them to our real destination - the Great Buddha statue! The temple building which houses this statue is the largest wooden building in the world! This bronze statue is huge... 16 meters high - the handy converter on my cell phone tells me this is 52 feet high. Supposedly it was built as a charm against small pox. Around the back of the building, one of the pillars had a hole in it, exactly the size of the statue's nostril, maybe a foot wide and a foot and half tall. Those who can squeeze through this hole are ensured of enlightenment. Little kids wiggled through it with no trouble. Trisha went first and had considerably more difficulty. It took her a few times, but she finally made it through to a round of applause from the crowd watching! I also made it through (you can see the top of my head in the photo as I am about halfway through) and am therefore ensured of enlightenment! Maybe when I get back to the States, there can be a statue of me, and people can wiggle through my nostril for enlightenment!

After we were ensured of our enlightenment, we continued wandering through the great park. There were many more deer, and many more temples, and many more shrines.

And one shrine in particular with many, many stone lanterns which I couldn't stop taking photos of.

We stopped for lunch and hoped for the drizzle which had turned into a steady rain to stop. It sort of did, but we decided to visit Nara's museum as a respite. That was more incredible than we expected, and we were so glad the rain had made us head indoors. The museum had absolutely beautiful statues of Buddha, and Shinto gods, and some other creatures (apparently companions of some sort to Buddha). They were really amazingly well preserved and wonderful works of art.