Osaka - Kyoto 6 : Nara & Places You Should Go :D

We only visited Nara once, bought the train tickets from Osaka straight to Nara because we didn't know better. The train ticket without any travel passes is twice more expensive. This was the day we learned to buy all passes for the whole week after my family went back home. Tourist passes can be bought in Tourist Infomation Center in the city center or the airport, so yes, please buy passes if you want to travel smart :F

True, the city didn't leave a big impact on me - probably that is why we only went there once (while we visited Kyoto 3 times). But looking back in my album, I noticed that I have as much beautiful photos in Nara as Kyoto and Osaka.

Af said that on the day we visited Nara, it was a cold and very windy day (and I probably complained a lot about that because I can't really tolerate winter) - plus we couldn't find kombini so we were starving and when we were heading to the Halal ramen shop in Nara, we got lost in the empty maze-like roads and it was sooooo far, plus the train tickets were so expensive. Maybe these excuses are the reasons why I didn't quite like the experience in Nara?

Anyway, places you should go in Nara :
Note: We didn't really explored Nara as much as we hoped, so there's not so many things to cram into a one-day visit. So there are more to this place than my short review.

• Deer Park - the famous deer park where lingering deers ask for deer crackers openly without shame, they will probably nudge you, follow you, and smell you. They are harmless, but they are still wild creatures so you shouldn't try to hold or ride them. The deers were all around the main city, around temples and museums, and there are so many old people (cleaners) sweeping off their wastes on the road all the time. So you can expect a very clean road even though it is full of wild animals walking freely. Deer is considered a sacred animal in the city, so they roam freely.

• Yoshikien Garden - we found the garden by accident when we were lost in the area. It is a private garden, free entrance for foreigners :D The area is divided into Japanese Pond Garden, Moss garden, Tea Ceremony & Flower Garden. I love the little moss garden and the ancient Japanese old house in the garden. We were the only two visitors when we went inside, so we had the big private garden to ourselves. Lucky we got lost, or wouldn't have found the garden.

• Todaiji Temple - Where you can see the largest bronze statue of Buddha, and the great south gate (in the picture), as you can see, I can't even take the whole picture of the gate because it was so big. During our visit, there were a lot of renovations so some of the places were closed for public. Honestly, we didn't visit the huge Buddha statue - I didn't know ! We were so hungry, cold and walked for hours since the morning so we just decided to find the nearest halal restaurant in the area. After we took the photo of this huge gate, we headed to the restaurant =.= If I had known better, I would have walked inside !

• Halal Ramen Naramachi Jinniyah : Here is a photo of our late lunch : the extra spicy ramen. More detailed post on foods in the next post :D

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There are so many temples, icy ponds, beautiful rows of houses and zakka shops in Nara that I didn't mention but worth the visit.  Plus the maze-like roads was definitely something, but I was a bit too grumpy, too tired, too cold during this time =.=

So check out my Flikr album for the full photos ya!
(I just uploaded more phootos inside the album)