No Place like Nara

Was this one of the best parts of our trip?!? Hands down, YES. 

I had heard that Nara is famous for it's deer park, and not much more. Honestly, we kind of were thinking that we'd just get off the train, pet some deer and be done. However, Nara is a pretty decent sized place, with lots of temples and shrines to see. And deer. Lots of deer. 

A gloomy day over Nara station

A helpful lady at information gave us lots of things to do and see. We headed towards the deer park.

hugging a post box cause we miss our parents

as we spotted this super important national heritage site, we happened upon something...

the people gathered at the bottom were looking at
something far cuter than the shrine

WE FOUND THE DEEEER

becoming one with the deer

we decided to appreciate this shrine for a few seconds

then we found more deer

you could buy crackers to feed the deer.

they  were cute

Till you ran out of food

some very hungry deer went for our
plastic bags

and managed to take a chunk out of our map...

where to next???

hmm, I think it's this way... somewhere in the gaping hole
of our deer-eaten map

a nice old man stopped to give us acorns to feed to the deer.
As Sarah put it, "this feels like a Miyazaki movie..."

The acorns once again made us popular with the deer, who will really only pay attention to you if you have food.

babyyyyy

There were lots of shrines and temples to see

but the weather was turning bad and we
didn't want to pay $5 to get into this one
that we could see from the outside

I wonder how many people tried to eat the deer
crackers...

we really connected with this lazy guy

This one waited at the crosswalk like a good citizen

and then crossed with the light. BRB dying

cute snacks at the convenience store

I have no idea what these are. But pandas

Ok, that was just to give you a break from the deer pictures. Back to the deer!!

trying to get selfies with the deer was no easy
task

we stopped for a delicious lunch near the station as we headed
back to Osaka.

We said goodbye to Nara and the fun we had there

I highly recommend this as a day trip. We found so many
interesting things and the deer were SO CUTE. Come on,
where else can you just chill with hundreds of deer?

Nara was an awesome, awesome trip. I'm so glad we took the time to go there and to explore it. Even though we thought we wouldn't spend much time there, we ended up staying for quite a few hours. It was well worth the time (it's barely an hour from Osaka and the cost roundtrip was like $10), and if you ever get to Japan, I highly recommend stopping by!

Next, I'll finish up with our adventures in Osaka!!!

~~

And because I'm literally always listening to music, here's a change from the Kdrama OSTs and ballads!

I recently rediscovered this old Suju song and remembered how much I loved it. Especially since the main stuff is sung by the vocalists, making it a super awesome song with a catchy refrain and adorable dancing!