Nara

Nara was the capital of Japan in the period before Edo (Tokyo). This place was seriously cool. We just came on a day trip here after attending Doraina's sister's International Christian Church. (We tried to find a ward there, but yeah, we couldn't figure out the address system at all...ever...so we went with her sister).

Here are some pics and explanation:

So in Nara the park there is a huge deer reserve and these wild (though I would call them domestic) deer just walk and run around wherever they please. Most of them stay on the reserve, but you'll see a few of them wandering the streets of Nara. They're free to roam wherever they please! This was one of the few deer that paused long enough to get a picture with me. Their big dark eyes are so adorable!


This was our favorite baby deer. We loved him.


A beautiful "gate" out by the pond at the temple complex.


One of the gate guards. These things were huge...seriously 30-40 feet tall.


Here is the temple that houses giant Buddha. You can kind of get a sense of how large it is by looking at the people in comparison to it.


Unfortunately this picture does not do Giant Buddha justice. You can't tell how huge he is! But, if you think about it. That temple (compare it to the size of the people) is pretty much the height of Giant Buddha. He's about 60 ft. tall in his seated position. Seriously huge people.


This is me posing between the two scary head guys. Doraina and I thought it would have been funny if we had been doing the peace sign... why? Well... just look at the picture and think about it for a minute... haha


This is one of the five story pagodas. They are amazingly beautiful buildings we saw three in our travels. They're pretty rare nowadays.


A cool picture that I liked of the sand garden.

Anyway, the day in Nara was awesome. We saw a lot of cool things... and we got to play with deer! Yeah!