Twelfth Week
I caught a really bad cold this week. I even ended up missing a few classes, and while I feel much better now, I still haven't gotten rid of the cold.
Thirteenth Week
Though still a little sick, this week I went on a 2-day school trip to Ise and Nara.
The first stop was some town in Ise. I don't know what the town was called but it was pretty cool, because it was completely traditional looking.
Believe it or not, this leads to an ATM.
The town was surrounded by mountains. It was very pretty.
Next to the town was a shrine, the shrine was the actual stop and the visit to the town was just a lunch stop really. But you could only take pictures from before the bottom of the stairs. Apparently, the moment you step on the first stair you're in territory of the gods and it's disrespectful to take pictures.
All around the shrine it was just forest, with the tallest and biggest trees I had ever seen. Many of the trees you couldn't see the top and were three times thicker than our bodies.
This tree was I think the biggest. It's not easy to tell without some reference but it was humongous.
There is some religious ceremony that takes place inside and people can go to see it, but I think it takes reservations or something. Since the university took care of everything I don't really know how it works.
In a little waiting area there was a water machine that provides cold water, hot water, and tea. (That is the other of the buttons too)
This was a rest stop on the way from Ise to Nara. Pretty big and nice.
Inside.
I got this dessert there. It's pretty tasty. It's some kind of cake roll with custard cream inside.
In Nara there was this shop that sold clothes on one side and vegetables on the other.
Deer!! Tons and tons of deer!! It's not an exaggeration that Nara has a lot of deer.
But they were pretty friendly.
This time we were going to the temple that holds the big statue of Buddha.
Needless to say everything in this temple was just enormous.
More deer, even inside the temple grounds.
This is the actual temple that holds the statue.
The Daibutsusan (Big Buddha). With the sun coming in from the door it's kind of bright, but there is a person in front of the Buddha. That person is a monk standing right at the feet of the statue.
There he is again. Makes it easy to see just how enormous it is, because words just aren't enough.
I have no idea where those stairs lead to, but the angle and height of the stairs make it scary-looking to have to go up those stairs.
A model of the temple grounds.
This one was another temple in Nara. Let me point out here that we went to four temples in Nara, one right after the other. By the end of it we were sick of temples, let alone capable of distinguishing which temple was which. The only reason I can distinguish is the first one, because it has the Daibutsusan.
Still, temple #2.
Now we've reached temple #3.
Unfortunately, I ran out of batteries before we reached temple #4.
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