Day 6, NARA!

12th October 2008

Day 6

Nara

OK so on waking up today I had no idea it was gonna be the BEST DAY EVER! The night before, Eli and I agreed to go to Nara. So I waited for him in the morning for quite a while, and thought he had gone out for the day, but apparently not everyone wakes up at 6:30am. We got the train through some beautiful countryside to Nara, a town about 30 minutes east of Osaka. Nara seemed really tranquil compared to Shinjuku (God, anywhere seems tranquil compared to there!). There were some men with huge mallets making rice cakes and lots of little shops on the way we were walking from the train station to Nara park. When we got to the park there were wild deer just walking around. It was mad! They were just trotting around in between all the people. We bought some deer biscuits (not made from deer) to feed to them. The whole thing was like something out of a dream scene.

The biscuits were wrapped up in paper and one deer ate the paper from Eli`s pack. One dead deer (LOL). Then we saw someone give a deer a whole banana (inc. skin) from their lunch box. The deer struggled, but ate it whole with no chewing. Do deer eat bananas? Two dead deer.

Eli and I were walking on a path through the park and saw a huge queue for something, like a sort of show. Didn`t fancy waiting in that huge queue for whatever was going on so we took a short cut through the woods and went into the area through the exit door to see what all the fuss was about. There were some deer with big antlers just trotting about that everyone was looking at, but we weren`t too bothered so we left. Glad we didn`t queue but now we had to cut through the woods again so the guards near the front wouldn`t see us. But as we were walking back, we walked into a HUGE SPIDERS WEB! God, it was bigger than us! Ew, ew, ew. I may have screamed a little. Eli saw the spider run off. It was black and yellow and HUGE. The rest of the way out of the woods we were chopping our arms about like Buzz Lightyear so we wouldn`t walk into any more spider webs, and were a lot more vigilant. It still makes me a bit quesy thinking about it. Eli saw one later that looked like it, so here is a pic!

Soon though we forgot about this and were in a shop that sold swords, check us! Ready for battle, or ready to face some spiders...

Then we went to a few temples and got to one called Todai-ji, which is the largest wooden structure in the world. We weren`t sure whether to go in or not as there was an entrance fee, but decided to go in anyway. I`m so glad we did.

Eli and I didn`t think anything was insdie the temple, we just assumed there wasn`t so imagine our faces when we were confronted with this -

It was AMAZING - the coolest/craziest/maddest thing I`ve seen in my life!

Eli remembered he was meant to be meeting one of his friends in Osaka, so we left and made our way to the train station. On leaving the park there were some street vendors selling food. Eli suggested I got some Takomiake (spelt wrong), which is a food Osaka is famous for, apparently. So I got some. They look like dough balls with syrup and flakes of something on them. I had trouble cutting one open so I shoved the whole thing into my mouth. While chewing it, I notice a big squishy lump of something inside. "What`s in it?", I mumbled. Eli replied, "flour, vegetables and octopus". OCTOPUS! Yes- the big squishy lump in my mouth was a bug lump of octopus. I didn`t know whether to keep on chewing or spit it out. There was no where to spit it and there were people around so I had no choice. All I could think about was octopus tenticles stuck in my teeth (a bit dramatic maybe?). Eli ate the rest of them (there were about 8). On the last one though I cut it open to look inside abd there it was... a section of octopus tenticle, white with purple suckers on it. Disgusting. I felt ill. I would have preferred to walk into another spiders web than eat another one (ok very dramatic now).

Anyway we dashed back to Osaka and met with Eli`s friend Ichico, and we all went to a club called Cell Block. They had a belly dancing show on, which was fab! Even learnt some salsa steps. I was a bit crap but it was fun. We realised what time it was and if we weren`t back to the hostel by 11pm they lock the doors. It`s a curfew they have you see. If you are out past 11pm you can`t get into the hostel and are effectively homeless for the night. We raced back through the train station, up escalators, down stairs, up stairs, down escalators it was quite comical really. We got on the train and worked out we should make it back just in time. Then the train stopped. It was the last stop for that train for the night so we had to get off and wait for another train in Tennoji station. It was almost 11pm and we were sure we would be sleeping under the stars for the night! We got a train and made a plan that Eli would run to the hostel as soon as we pulled up to the station and I would phone the hostel from the nearest phone box to tell them to wait for us then run to the hostel. Eli dashed off like Speedy Gonzalez and I phoned the hostel. It was after 11pm. No answer. I ran too and when I got there, there was a guy waiting by the door for us, just about to lock up, we made it - just. Close call!

Today was so much fun!