Visit gallery: Nara
Nara, the ancient (8th century) capital of Japan, is famous for its temples and pagodas. The main building in the Todaiji temple complex houses a colossal bronze Buddha statue (Nara Daibutsu) is said to be the largest wooden building in the World.
Photography notes
Inside the temples, flash photography and tripods are prohibited. Consequently, one needs fast lenses. Wide-angle lenses are especially useful for three reasons: first, for a given aperture, a wide-angle lens would give a greater depth of field, compared to a telephoto lens; second, short focal length allows for slower shutter speeds, which is helpful in the low-light conditions; third, the interior layouts of the temples often call for a wide angle composition, as there is often no opportunity to step back away from the subjects (statues and people).
Besides architecture, another interesting subject is a large population of deer that live in the streets of Nara. The dear are, technically, wild, but they definitely substantially rely on the tourist traffic in the city. Street vendors sell special biscuits (shika senbei) that can be fed to the deer. The deer quickly approach people with the treats. They actually learned to bow their heads when begging for food.
Travel notes
We spent a day in Nara with our friends, one of whom lives relatively nearby in Osaka and often travels to Nara to enjoy the leisurely pace of this ancient city.
In Todaiji, the monks offer the tourists to predict their fortune. For a small fee, one can draw a narrow wooden dowel out of a prismatic box that has holes on one end, like a giant salt shaker. The dowel contains a number that is matched to aprinted piece of paper that describes your fortune. Fortunes range from “extremely bad” through “moderately bad”, “neutral”, “moderately good” to “extremely good”. High resolution of the fortune scale definitely feels satisfying. The papers are then tied to the strings outside of the temple, so that the good fortunes come true. Overall, this fortune-telling ritual feels very appropriate for the settings in which it is conducted (dim lights in the grand temple, giant statues of gods, etc.) despite the irony of the fact that it is done by the monks who generally preach “being here and now”.
We actually had a chance to test our fortune prediction on the very same day by experiencing a variation of the story about a proverbial camera left on the train in Japan by a foreign tourist, only to be safely recovered hours later. In our case, Svetlana, who drew a “moderately bad fortune” in Todaiji, forgot her watch in the restaurant where we had lunch. She returned to the restaurant two hours later with a friend (who drew a “very good fortune”), and the owner was very glad to return the watch to the rightful owner. Apparently, he even ran after us when he found the watch, but could not find us in the maze of the narrow streets of Nara. Thus, one could argue, the good and the bad fortunes of the two people in our group cancelled each other (the rest of us drew largely neutral fortune predictions).
After the day of walking and taking pictures, our friends suggested that we go to Osaka for dinner, because “there is no good food in Nara”. After a short train ride, we arrived at Osaka station – a massive complex of shops and restaurants. Takoyaki! Osaka has been famous for this food since the times of Toyotomi Hideyoshi – sufficient time to perfect the recipies.