Breakfast: Teishoku

I’m not sure how we discovered this place, but we ended up eating at a cafeteria-style breakfast place called Shijō Nishinotōin Shokudō. You got in a line and chose individually prepared dishes from the counter to fill up your tray, and then you paid at the end. Once again, we loved the variety, and strategically picked every dish to try something new:

Today’s plan was to go to Nara, a city known for its free-roaming deer and Tōdai-ji, a Buddhist temple complex. We took three trains to get there: the Karasuma Line to Takeda Station, the Kintetsu-Kyoto Line to Yamato-Saidaiji Station, and the Kintetsu-Nara Line to Kintetsu-Nara Station. The train ride was about an hour and a half, and we arrived at Nara at around 10:30am:

Kōfuku-ji, Nandai-mon, Tōdai-ji

From the station we passed through the Higashimuki Shopping Street to get to the main park area. The park itself was massive, yet still well-kept. The deer were very friendly and even bowed to you whenever you interacted with them, but they did congregate and overwhelm you if you bought “deer crackers” from the many vendors around the park. Note that their poop (eff) was… everywhere, but apparently thats due to tourist overfeeding:

For the rest of the early morning we explored the various temples and shrines around the park, including Kōfuku-ji and Himuro Shrine. From there, we passed the Nara National Museum and through the giant wooden Nandai-mon Gate to get to Tōdai-ji:

Today was a school day, so there were a lot of schoolchildren on field trips at the temple. We were able to see the Great Buddha inside the main hall, alongside a variety of other artifacts and statues.

Nigatsu-dō, Hokke-dō

Directly east of Tōdai-ji was the Nigatsu-dō (February Hall) and Hokke-dō (March Hall), which were architecturally my favorite structures in the entire park:

Another photo of the approach to the two halls:

Kasuga Taisha

After walking through February Hall, we opted to take the back route to Kasuga Taisha (which I convinced my family to go to, even though they were pretty shrine-sick at this point). It was an intensely long walk in the summer heat, but I’d consider it worth:

Ice Cream: Mamejica Kitchen

We decided to leave the park area after this and were in desperate search for lunch (it was around 2pm) when we stumbled across a really cute ice cream shop called Mamejica Kitchen. We ended up getting three swirl cones which had indescribably rich, milky flavors——I think the dairy they use in Japan is somehow different from US dairy (either it’s less overprocessed or the cows are fed differently):

Lunch: Bluefin Tuna

Thus began the search for lunch. The issue with using Google Maps or Yelp (common in the US, but the latter is almost never used by the Japanese) is that businesses with unromanized names or no lack of English descriptions are less preferred by algorithms, meaning you’re most likely getting tourist-friendly locations. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as you’re more likely to be welcomed and understood (and the flavors might be more palatable for foreign tastebuds), but it does mean that you miss out on more “authentic” establishments that locals tend towards.