Kobe & Nara, Japan

Once again we started another 10 hour tour. This one to the city of Nara. Nara was once the capital of Japan. For hundreds and hundreds of years the capital was changed upon the death of the emperor. The new emperor would then choose a new place.

Our first stop was at the Horyuji temple, the oldest temple in Japan. It was reputed to be among the oldest wooden buildings in the world.

Our favorite site was at the Kasuga Shrine. This is a Shinto religious site. As we were walking up the hill, we met a mother walking down carring her baby. She had brought her son there for a blessing. He had a black cape covering him which told our guide that the baby was a boy. If the baby had been a girl then the cape would have been bright red or pink. The mother was very kind to let us all take pictures.




After we walked to the top of the hill we came to more buildings. We were lucky that there was two weddings. One was just finishing and the other was just starting. I loved the wedding clothes.


At this shrine site there were hundreds of lanterns all over. The biggest ones were made of cement and lined the walkways. Inside the walls of the buildings were smaller black, gold, red lanterns hanging from the ceilings. In the Shinto religion you can come here and make a wish. If your wish comes true then you are to bring a lantern back to this site. It was unbeleivable how many lanterns there were.

We had a western lunch at a restaurant.

Our last stop was at the world's largest statue of Buddha. The Todaiji (Great Buddha) is cased in bronze and set in an enormous wooden building. It was said that twenty men could stand on just one of Buddha's hand. The lighting in the room was very bad and because of the distance my flash on my camera did little good.

We were very, very tried when we got back to our ship!!!!!