Nara

This year marks the 1300 year of Nara. It was founded in 710 as the first capital of Japan. It only had this distinction for less than a century, but it still holds tons of important cultural treasures. The most significant of those is the Giant Buddha. It truly is a sight to see. The statue is huge. It is one of the largest statues of Buddha in Japan. This was the second time for me to see it, but it was still awesome.

Another major draw to Nara is the deer park. Hundreds of deer wander about the parks looking for people giving out deer crackers. These deer can get pretty aggressive and won't hesitate to snatch anything they can. I saw one deer grab some leaves from an old man's bag. It was pretty amusing. You can buy a stack of deer crackers for about 100 yen. It's worth to do once, but if you have small kids it's probably better not to.

The only bad thing about this trip is that my camera bugged out. It actually started freaking out the previous day. The pictures would come out all distorted and oddly colorful. I thought that it was overheating, but found that if I squeeze it it goes back to normal. I have no idea what's wrong with it. I just know that it picked a horrible time to finally die on me. I guess I'm lucky that it has lasted as long as it has. I bought this thing in preparation for my trip to Guam back in 2006. It has been a good and loyal piece of equipment, but now it's retirement time.

One interesting thing about this was that it was one of the very few times that I rode in a private car on a Japanese highway. My girlfriend drove and I navigated and admired the scenery. It was overall a nice drive. Had I been driving we would've stopped several times for picture breaks. Through most of the cities there were high walls which prevented some views, but outside the urban areas you could see mountains covered in trees and valleys and far off cities. It was neat. I definitely want to do this again.

Nara is just absolutely gorgeous. I really wish that my camera hadn't messed up on me. I won't have to opportunity to go back there for a long time. But when I do, I'm going to have a new and awesome camera to capture the beauty of this great city.