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| A cat sign in Nara-machi. Evident everywhere we went is that this is a city that loves cats. |
We took the JR train from Shingu around the Kii peninsula to Osaka (back to the very train station that started our trip off to Mount Koya) and transferred trains to Nara, arriving in the afternoon. Our first night in Nara was at the JR hotel, which had the benefit of being very conveniently located right next to the train station (although our real motivation for staying there was to have one more night with an onsen hot spring, as our last two nights would not.) We dropped our bags and headed off to meander around Nara-machi, a section of town known for its traditional old-style merchant houses, now essentially filled with boutique shops and cafes. We passed galleries and shops specialising in textiles, glass, paper arts, and shops selling narazuke pickles (the pickle of Nara: as it has long been an area with lots of sake breweries, the vegetables are pickled and aged in sake lees (the by-product of making sake) and have a very distinctive taste.) It is a fun area to walk around and apart from a visit to the traditional craft museum we spent most of our afternoon just wandering the streets of Nara-machi. Of course now that our trip was coming to an end it was time to start thinking about souvenirs!
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| Typical Nara-machi street |
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| Nara's man-hole covers: featuring deer, of course. |
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| Typical Nara scene: both the old and new. |
Our second day in Nara we checked out of the JR hotel and took our bags to the Guesthouse Nara Backpackers hostel to check in and leave our bags before we headed out again to explore. The Guesthouse is an old traditional house which has been converted into a guesthouse with dorms as well as private rooms, located very conveniently within walking distance to Nara Park. The building and gardens had a lot of character and we really enjoyed our stay. But first, it was off to the Heijō Palace Remains.
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| The picturesque entry to Guesthouse Nara Backpackers |
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| First of many deer sightings on our way to the station as we headed out to Heijō Palace. |
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| Reconstructed Heijō Palace, of which the grounds are are an enormous park. |
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| Gate at Heijō Palace with the biscuit we got at the JR hotel for bringing our own toothbrush. |
Nara was briefly the capital of Japan for about 75 years between 710 and 784 and the Heijō Palace remains is, as it sounds, the site of where the Imperial palace used to be during this time. When the capital moved to Kyoto the palace grounds were abandoned and eventually decayed until most of the structures above ground had disappeared by the year 1300, although as we learned the underground portions were well preserved so that archaeologists have been able to reconstruct the site.
