Japan day 6

April 6 - We rode the bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto today. It goes at something over 200 km/hour, but doesn’t actually seem that fast when you’re in it. I was most impressed with the train staff - all the conductors and the lady with the food cart all stopped and bowed as they came into the carriage and then turned and bowed again before they left - quite extraordinary! You are supposed to be able to see Mount Fuji from the train in a couple of places, but it was still pretty cloudy and we couldn’t see any of him. We had a nice lunch at a hotel in Kyoto and then set off to Nara for the tourist-thing. First stop was the Todai-Ji Temple where the Great Buddha lives - and he is HUGE! His thumb is as tall as a man. Almost impossible to describe - this enormous, implacable statue surrounded by amazing carvings, colours and statues. It was very crowded when we were there and although our guide did have a microphone, it didn’t work that well and again, her English was heavily accented (we have had 3 different guides so far and they have all tried hard, but haven’t been easy to understand - there would be a roaring trade in accent reduction for retired speech therapists here!). The Temple is in the middle of the Deer Park where, surprise surprise, there are many deer! You can buy deer cookies to feed them, but of course the deer learned many years ago that tourists are food sources and they are not shy in coming to request goodies. They were actually quite a pest and get quite aggressive at times. We then went on to the Kasuga Shrine (Shinto) where there are many, many stone lanterns. Again, many people and hard to hear what the guide was saying. April is the height of the tourist season because of the cherry blossoms (and we have seen some amazing blossoms), but it does mean that the tour is very rush-rush, get on the bus, get off the bus. We are seeing the high spots, but don’t have time to poke around and enjoy.