Kyoto Day 3: Lost in Nara

I woke up to Yuko staring at me. She set the alarm for bright and early at 7am because she had class at 10. Then unexpectedly she started making breakfast. Ok letting me stay over is one thing, but making me breakfast? I have never had any of my friends do that for me before. I helped out. We had eggs, toast, sausage, and salad, my first American-style breakfast since Niigata. Then I took a shower, packed up all my stuff, and we were ready to go. She gave me directions about how to get to Nara and then walked me to the train station. I definitely need to get Takura and Yuko something for letting me stay at their apartments.

I thought I got lost on the way to Nara, but ended up arriving at the right place. Lucky! I could not find a map of Nara around the train station, so I took a picture of one out front. It is a good thing that I still have a camera!

I spent the day wandering around Nara. I visited some temples first off. I also visited the giant buddha statue (the biggest one in Japan) and saw lots of kids. Finally, I fed some deer. That's right, deer. Nara is famous for its deer population. They are well fed by tourists like me who pay 150 yen for a pack of senbei to feed them. If you are carrying senbei, you will immediately have 10 deer run up to you and make you give them a piece. They will tug at your shirt, pockets, and if you are not careful will try to stand up and take the senbei straight from your hand! Needless to say I had a good time with them.

Eventually I ended up at this hill that you could pay to climb. I was about to do it when I saw a map of the area. Apparently that small hill was only one of 3 levels. I wanted to go to the top one. After a little more searching I found a hiking trail. It was 3 kilometers to the summit and 5 to a waterfall. Now I ran cross country, so I figured that it would take about an hour to walk all the way to the summit and waterfall, then another hour to come back. If it took a little longer that would be alright too. It was only 1pm and I did not have to be back to Kyoto until 11 to catch my bus. I departed on a hike through the woods.

It was a good hike with almost nobody around. Once I reached the summit I was greeted with a beautiful view of the city. It was amazing. After getting my fill of pictures, I headed off to the waterfall. The waterfall ended up being pretty tiny, and it was a ways off the beaten path. It seemed that nobody had been there for a while because there were rocks and fallen trees in the middle of the path that needed navigation.

I started my journey back and passed a guardhouse. I'm glad there was a guardhouse there. I continued my journey and ended up on a paved road for the rest of the way back. After going a little ways it started to sprinkle. On top of that, it was almost 4:30 so I was getting worried about making it back in time. That is when a car came up from behind me (the guy from the guardhouse) and I stopped him to hitchike a ride back to the station. It was this guy from Osaka and his daughter from Nara who were kind enough to give me a ride. I was very grateful. The ride was much longer than I thought. The road winded down the mountain and would have taken me another couple of hours if I had walked it. They dropped me off right by the station so I could hop a train back to Kyoto. I am so very grateful to those two.

Back at Kyoto I had 4 hours to kill until my bus left. Unfortunately, all of my friends were busy with school and jobs. I spent time around the station. At some point I decided that I could win at Pachinko and went to the nearest parlor. After settling on which machine I wanted to play, I put in my money and read the instructions. The screen said to push some button, but I couldn't find it anywhere! The guy sitting behind me helped me. I lost all my balls within 15 minutes of starting. How do people win at this game? I looked around and did not see anyone with buckets of balls sitting around. There has to be some sort of strategy to it... After that I went to Karaoke for an hour by myself. That was sort of depressing, but I got in some practice. Finally, I stopped by the local convenience store to pick up some booze and water for the trip.

I slept much better on the bus this time!