After Kyoto, on our way to Osaka, we stopped in a small, very old city called Nara. Nara is known for its ancient temples and forests, and its open deer park. We walked all around the park, through a Japanese garden, up the hill to Todaiji Temple (the Great Eastern Temple), and then continued up to an even higher point where we enjoyed these beautiful views.
And this temple, next to a lovely teahouse:
And we also went to...the deer park!
(Elise making friends) ^_^
Dinner time: soba!
And an evening stroll around another temple. This one had hundreds of stone lanterns all around it!
But our real luck was that we had arrived at just the right time for the Nara Tokae Illumination Festival:
The highlight of the whole beautiful experience was seeing Todaiji, the Great Eastern Temple, during the special worship service during the festival. It was possibly the most moving religious scene I've ever witnessed, though I'm not Buddhist. As we walked up to the temple, the window at the top was open so that you could look into the Buddha's face as you approached.
There were hundreds and hundreds of people there, and great chanting resounded from the temple, amplified by large speakers. At first I thought it was just a recording, but when I got inside the Daibutsuden (the main hall), I realized there were really monks chanting as they performed a ceremony. In the center sat one of the most impressive Buddhas I've ever seen. He was huge and heavy and communicated such a sense of stillness in the moving room. People circled by the hundreds round the statue, some on the platform up next to him, the rest of us down on the floor, like one great, slow river.
It was so powerful and ethereal, I was almost moved to tears. This was a real religious experience, the way I felt they should be.
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