Last day in Osaka and I had to choose between Universal Studio Japan or Nara, the old capital.
On to the world heritage site it was, as I didn’t want to spend so much money on USJ.. and Nara wasn’t in my plan yet.
Although Nara is an old capital of the country, there wasn’t much there from those times. Except for the temple’s up north, of which a few (or all) are now world heritage. Nara in a few words: temple, deer, shrine, deer, deer, deer, museum, deer, temple, deer, shrine, deer, statue of a deer.
Near one of the temple’s I got interviewed by some kids on an English-speaking assessment. They had to ask us some questions and make us write our name and country of origin on their piece of paper. The old teacher in my really sees this as a great exercise. Both linguistically and for personal development. It takes some courage to ask some random stranger questions in a language you’re learning, especially at that age not all of them were as comfortable with it.
I walked here a ton trough the woods to find all kind of little shrines that practically all looked the same. Saw some birds and even a snake gliding trough the brushwood!
For lunch I went to a local burger restaurant. (Yeah yeah shame on me, fastfood while in Japan.) Tried out White Soda, probably the Calpis from Pepsi Corp… it was special, not going for a refill. A nice detail on the bun was the deer stamp. the fries sucked.
After spending most of the day in the neighbourhood of over a 1000 deer! I worked my way back to Osaka, for a second visit to Nanba. This time trying to walk correctly from the first time to Dotonbori. And I made it. this place is filled with food stalls, restaurants and bars. You need more than a life time to try out everything they offer in these streets. On one of the advertisement boards for a 7floor building I found the marks of an anime bar. But unfortunately it seemed like they were closed.
Dinner was Yakisoba, nothing special though…