Welcome to Day 8: Part 2 of my Japan & Korea 2017 travel series! I will be splitting Day 8 into 3 pieces, I think, because we did a lot in one day. And, as with the previous post (Day 8: Part 1), I have a lot of photos from this part of the day that I want to share with all of you. After finishing our time at Fushimi Inari, we took a train and travelled to another place that I had really been hoping we’d have time to visit: Nara! For those of you who don’t know, Nara is known for being full of many many, many, many, many, many friendly deer!

After an amazing hike on Inari Mountain (that I talked about in the previous post), we made our way to a very cute, and older, train station, where we waited for a train that would take us to Nara. We had to wait for a bit, and I was thirsty, so I decided to indulge in a nice cold beer from one of the vending machines in the station. I have to say that the vending machines full of drinks that you can find everywhere in Japan are one of the things that I miss most! I also love that it’s possible to enjoy a nice cold beer outside!

When the train arrived, we got some nice window seats and rested our feet while watching the scenery pass us by outside. The train ride lasted about an hour or so, which on one hand makes me sad because that’s time we could have spent seeing other things, but at the same time … this whole vacation was so so busy that we really did need to rest our feet (and it’s the only reason why we were able to stay out longer than other nights, and see more that way. So, retrospectively, this long train ride helped us see some of nighttime Japan that we weren’t able to see on other days when we were too tired from doing other things by the time the sun had set, haha.

When we arrived in Nara, it turned out that we also had to take a bus that would take us to where the deer are, as well as a temple that we wanted to see. But after that, we arrived! And I could not believe it! As I said, it’s been a dream of mine to go here, and I was literally squealing when we stepped off the bus and onto the street, and we could see blue skies, beautiful hills in the distance, and deer everywhere! I mean looook! (And did I mention that if you bow to them, they bow back?! Isn’t that amazing! I’m so glad I caught it with my Boomerang app so that I can look at it any time!)

They were all over the sidewalks and also in this park where most of them can be found. We wanted to spend some time around them (since they were one of the reasons why we were visiting Nara in the first place, if not the reason), so we bought some food for them from one of the stalls selling special deer food, and they became like our shadows! Some of them were even quite pushy, but in a funny way (you can see my friend, in the second photo below, trying to tell a few of them “no,” haha. I’m so glad I took a photo)!

When we ran out of food, and realized that we had a few other things to do that day, we decided to make our way to the one other thing that we wanted to see in Nara: the Tōdai-ji temple! Luckily there were more deer along the way, and we could pet them as we went. As we approached the temple, I couldn’t believe how large the gates were, and my friend told me that this temple is very very old. I also could not believe the immensity of the Buddha statue inside! It was actually bigger than the huge statue that we saw on the day we spent in Kamakura! (You can see that statue here!)

Once we finished there, we pet some more deer on the way back to the train station…

…before we said goodbye to Nara and headed for the city of Osaka!

In the next post (the last part of Day 8), I will tell you (and show you) everything that we did in the famous city of Osaka! I’m hoping that my schedule will allow me to share that post pretty quickly with all of you as well, since I really didn’t like having to wait this long between parts 1 and 2 of Day 8 … gah. So, until next time!

ALL PHOTOS WERE TAKEN BY ME! PLEASE ASK ME FOR PERMISSION IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO USE THEM ANYWHERE. THANK YOU FOR READING THIS POST ABOUT MY JAPAN AND KOREA 2017 ADVENTURES! ALSO, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS AND/OR SOME OF YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES IN JAPAN, ASIA, OR ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD, IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!