January 20th (Wednesday)

We left the Japanese style in this morning and departed on a two-hour bus ride to Nara, Japan. The first shrine that we visited had two of the oldest wooden buildings in the world. Half of one of them burned down about a hundred years ago and was rebuilt. We were there until 1pm so I spent a lot of time relaxing in one of the gardens and I listened to my iPod. The peace and quiet was very soothing and this was really the first time since Sunday that I got just sit around and do nothing.

After lunch we drove across the countryside to Nara Park. The journey took about 30 minuets, but it seemed a lot faster than I thought it would be. We visited one of the local shrines and then traveled to the actual park. I knew we had arrived because there were massive populations of deer scattered across the park! The deer were people friendly, especially if you had some snacks. We spent an hour or so walking around the park and playing with the deer and then we walked to the final shrine. We arrived and A massive building was in the middle of a large field. The building was probably as tall as the American Airlines building and about half a football field in length. Inside was a gigantic Buddha, bigger than anything I have ever seen before. The stature is the largest bronze sculpture on the planet weighing around 550 tons. The building that was built around it soared into the air and is claimed to be the largest wooden building the world.

We wrapped up our day by taking a 1-hour bus ride to Shin-Osaka station and then we hopped on a bullet train to Hiroshima. When we arrive we walked for about 5 minuets in a light rain to our Japanese style inn. I took a quick shower and headed down to dinner. It was a basic dinner with some good grub!

Tomorrow we leave bright and early and spend the majority of the day at the Hiroshima Park, the dome, and the peace museum, followed by visiting a few shrines in the evening.

Today had a lot of traveling, which was nice to give the legs a rest. The rest of the trip will be heavy walking and lots of pictures! I come home in a few days so I am getting excited for that and getting sad that I’m leaving Japan.