Nara, Japan

September 27th--Today, I decided to get up early (4:45am) in order to attend a 6am Zen meditation session. It was held at a temple on the eastern side of Kyoto. I walked to the bus station, only to find out that the buses don't start running that early. So I hopped in a cab and headed to the Nanzenji Temple. It didn't take that long in a taxi so I arrived around 5:30. There were a couple of other people walking through the grounds so I followed them. They went into a building next to the main temple but I stayed outside for a few more minutes. It was nice to enjoy the cool, peaceful early morning. A few minutes before 6:00, I headed in, took off my shoes and headed up stairs. I was greeted in Japanese and handed a piece of paper with Japanese writing. I was a little nervous because I didn't know if it was going to be an issue that I didn't speak Japanese. I then entered a large room and there were mats sat out on the floor facing the front of the room. There were about 50 people already sitting on the floor in silence. I found a place and sat down, Indian style, trying to follow the lead of the others. An older man was going around positioning everyone and of course, he came over to me. He took my legs and crossed them so that one foot was up top when crossed ...I think this position is called lotus in yoga. He also straightened my back and positioned my hands. Shortly after, the monk at the front of the room began the session. I must say that while I was looking forward to enjoying some peaceful meditation, I found myself spending the majority of the time thinking about how uncomfortable I was. It was really hard to sit completely still on the floor for so long. My legs started going to sleep and then my knees and back started hurting. After around 40 minutes of silent meditation, the monk began to speak and the rest of the session was all in Japanese, so I was a little lost. Suffice it to say, it wasn't the "relaxing meditation" I had hoped for. However, the early morning walk on the temple grounds at sunrise and then the walk around afterwards, were very peaceful. It's nice to see temple grounds like this without the crowds. I did have to make a stop at a nearby Starbucks before heading back to the room to meet up with Amy and the kids. They were just getting up and ready and so we decided to head out for the day to the nearby town of Nara. In order to get to Nara, we hoped on the rapid train from Kyoto that took about 50 minutes. We arrived in Nara right about 11:00 a.m. We immediately started walking toward the main attraction in Nara...the Great Buddha. The temple was quite a walk and so after a while, everyone was getting hungry for lunch. We really wanted to just find something quick and so we gave into the kids request to eat at McDonald's...or I should say the 3 of us ate at McD's. Amy ran into a pita shop across the street to grab her lunch to go. After lunch, we continued our walk and were shortly greeted by our first deer. In Nara Park, over a 1,000 deer roam freely because they are considered to be divine messengers. The kids weren't sure about the deer, but they quickly adapted and were wanting to feed all the deer. It was just the craziest thing to see deer allowing humans to touch them and they weren't scared. We actually commented on how we would never, ever see anything like this in Texas. In fact, the closer we go to the Todaji Temple, the more deer we saw. They were literally all over the place, but were kept out of the temple itself. We entered the temple area and immediately saw the Daibutsuden which is the wooden structure (the largest wooden structure in the world) that houses the Great Buddha (the largest bronze Buddha in Japan). We walked in a circle in order to see the Great Buddha from all angles. Behind Buddha is a huge wooden column with a small hole in it near the ground. According to popular belief, if you can manage to crawl through this opening, you'll be sure to reach enlightenment. Abby and Austin climbed through it with no problems. Amy was contemplating whether or not to do it until she saw several women really struggle to get through it and decided that she probably wouldn't have been very graceful at it. From here, Amy and I got our fortune by shaking a bamboo canister until a wooden stick with a number came out. The number corresponded with a piece of paper. Amy was thrilled with hers of 'Good Luck'. I, on the other hand, received one that said "No Luck". However, I had the opportunity to negate my fortune by tying in on a rack at the Temple! After leaving the temple, we got snow cones and wandered back through all the deer. We made it all the way back to the park area and bought deer food to feed the deer one last time, except for one problem, we couldn't find any deer in the area we were in. It was absolutely amazing that there were so many deer around us before and now we couldn't find a single one. So we walked toward the Kofukuji Temple which has a five-story pagoda. It was close to this temple where we finally found a few deer to feed before heading back to the train station. On our walk back to the train station, we looked in a few shops. Our train left Nara a little after 4:00 and arrived back in Kyoto around 5:00. The kids were hungry so we headed to dinner and went back to the restaurant we ate at the first night, Kyo-Chabana. Tonight we all tried something different and the food was wonderful (well at least for 3 of us, Abby got really picky tonight). After dinner, it was laundry time. We were lucky to have a coin laundry right here at the hostel so we decided after a week of not doing laundry, it was a must tonight.