Chronicles of Nara-nia

Last Saturday, I had a promise with a friend to go sightseeing in Nara. Unfortunately, my friend caught the flu, and so we had to cancel. But that evening, there was a big festival where they light a mountain on fire, so I wanted to go see that. I hopped on with another group that was going, and I met up with them in Nara.

First, we walked over to Todai-ji, a famous temple housing a giant Buddha statue. Oh, wait, but on the way there, we ran into those guys. Nara is probably best known for the wild deer that live around those parts. They’re totally used to people, and they’ll come up and eat your food. Or your clothes, bags, hair, etc. You can pet them though, and they’re pretty cute. Ah, and since we went in winter, they didn’t have those killer horns, which is a major plus. Anyway, Tina got all excited and took some pictures with them.

We went inside the temple, where the GIANT Buddha was chilling out, as always. A person is probably smaller than one of his fingers, just to give perspective. And, as always, one of the temple’s most popular attractions was this small hole in one of the pillars. It’s said to be the same size of Buddha’s nostrils, so…guess what they call it. If you can squeeze through there, you get good luck. Bam, there you go. 

So, three years ago, I came here. And somehow, I made it through that hole. And when I got back to America, I wrote my college application essay based on that experience. That essay got me into college. What I learned at Tufts brought me back here again. The circle is complete.

Since there was still time before the main event, we found a place for dinner. The place turned out to be a curry restaurant with model trains rolling around. It was pretty tasty, and the train theme was cute. You could pay 800 yen to control one of the trains for a bit, but that’s a little pricy. So we just watched them.

When it was time for the main event, we made our way through the crowd and waited. There was a mountain, but it wasn’t on fire. But then, they started the fireworks show. BOOM! BANG! Japanese fireworks are SOOO pretty. I saw some new tricks, including deer-shaped fireworks. It was a fairly big show, and by the time it finished, the mountain was ablaze. I don’t know what to say beyond that. I mean, they lit a mountain on fire. ON FIRE. Which was super cool to watch.

Oh, and Tina bought chocolate candies that, because we were in Nara with the deer, were labeled “Deer Poop Choco”, and she didn’t notice. Whoops. We didn’t say anything at the time because we all thought she already knew…