Japan - Day 3 - Nara - Kasuga Taisha, Yoshikien garden and kaki no ha suzhi

 Yup, Nara is known for deer

 

So began our third day in Japan. Walking on the way to the conference centre with hubby, we took a detour, past the Kofuku-ji temple, or the 5 story pagoda, and saw this sign. No lab there, just a toilet :P

The conference held a green tea ceremony. It wasn't terribly exciting as everything was done behind screens. So we just sat down, got served some wagashi, which were pretty but tasted like compressed icing sugar and served a big cup of frothy green tea. I got given the pink cup as I was a girl. It was bitter, but not too bad. The wagashi is supposed to counter the bitter taste I think.

After dropping hubby off, I went to Kasuga Taisha shrine. If you go early in the morning, it is nice a quiet, later in the day and you get loads of tourists and schoolkids. Lots of lovely stone lanterns line the path up

 Cheeky deer looking for food

And here's the shrine

 

 Nearby there was another temple or shrine, but it seems to be related to finding love?

All the ema were heart shaped. People writing wishes to find their true love, but it was very pretty, was tempted to buy an ema just so I could take it home ^^;

 They also had a fortune you could buy. This is slightly different than the "shake the stick out of the tin" omikuji. You went up to the counter, paid the lady behind the counter and you got a piece of paper. You were then supposed to take it to the special basin and soak the paper in the water. Words will magically appear and tell you your fortune. No English translation, so I didn't bother to buy one.School girls were particularly excited though.

Sake barrels

I then made my way south and continued following the hill. This brought me to a more open area of the city. A bit of a market garden area and houses were more spread apart. It was a good way to see how people lived so I did a sticky beak

 Field of growing vegetables

 There is a big bamboo pole training the tree branch into a certain shape

This one had a tree growing out of it!

Heading back to the town centre, saw a Tanuki near the Yoshikien garden. This garden is free for foreign tourists.

 You just have to fill out a form saying where you were from and you enter for free!

 

A nice way to see a Japanese garden, it even has a tea house, but there seemed to be some sort of ceremony going on in there. Isukuen garden is right next door to this, and from memory they charged 700yen to enter. Needless to say, that garden was skipped ;P

So our dinner was again from the supermarket. They seem to stock slightly different things each night, so we had a wander down to see what they had on offer.

 I'm not sure if this is relevant to all big supermarkets in Japan, but the one in Nara makes you pack your own groceries into the bags. They take your basket, scan the items and place it into another basket. After you have paid, you take it to another counter where you pack your groceries away. This does mean though that all the cashiers will ask if you need a plastic bag. Of course they ask this in Japanese, but if you just stare at them with a blank face they will switch to English. Girl ahead of us in the queue was from Singapore and the same thing happened to her, the blank look on her face...haha..shouldn't laugh, same thing happened to me several times... T_T

I should tell you that cashiers in Japan are always saying something to you. I generally have no idea what they are saying, but after observing the cashiers and people for a few days (and some research when I got home) this is generally what they say:

Cashier: Welcome. Do you need a plastic bag?

You: supposed to nod or say "Hai"

Cashier: (After scanning the items) Here's the total, that will be XXXyen please

You: supposed to place your money in the tray (not hand it to them)

Cashier: Ah, I have received XXXXyen, (turns to get your change). Here is XXXyen in change. Thank you! Please come again!

Oh, you want all the plastic bags you can get. You see, it's very difficult to find a rubbish bin in Japan. Seriously difficult, so you need the bag to carry around your rubbish until you strike it lucky and find a bin. Generally bins can be found at train stations, but usually behind the ticketing gates. Often we would carry our rubbish with us until we get back to the hotel.

Anyway, for dinner tonight, we had a specialty from Nara, kaki no ha sushi. Sushi wrapped in persimmon leaves. The sushi is cured and wrapped in salted persimmon leaves, which apparently have antibacterial properties. A slightly tangy and salty flavour, but yummy. You don't eat the persimmon leaves.

Dessert was creme caramel, also known as pudding (or purin as the Japanese say it)

 Hubby needed beer again.

Well, the next day was going to be very exciting for us, a trip to Kyoto! A lot of asian conferences tend to have a day off in the middle of the conference. Apparently so they can genuinely do some sightseeing without making their bosses angry, or something like that. 

Kyoto the next day!