Himeji, Nara, Temples and Yarn

Temple near Himeji

Over the mid autumn festival weekend (HK got Monday and Tuesday off work this week) my husband and I decided to take a last trip to Japan before we move out of Asia. In January we are moving back to England because we miss it far too much. We will miss HK, but also we will miss being able to have short holidays in Japan.

For this trip we flew to Osaka and took a train immediately from the airport to Himeji, a town along the coast facing Shikoku. Himeji has a reasonably famous castle which we intended to visit, as well as a group of temples that were used in part of The Last Samurai movie. The castle, thanks to our poor planning, was actually being renovated, so couldn’t be seen from the outside. There were grounds around the castle with many outlying buildings that were looked beautiful. We decided instead of paying to see the inside of the castle, to go to the temple grouping.

Autumn colors Himeji

There was a rope way gondola shuttling people up to the top of the mountain where the temples were. It was a serene day that looked like it would rain, so there weren't many people. From the gondola we took a hike to the top, and enjoyed the most lovely autumn colors.

I laughed slightly at this little temple statue with a crocheted hat. I guess there is crochet everywhere! And yarn of course.

Nara

The next day we took a train to Nara and spent most of the day in the hotel playing battleship. There was a typhoon this day so going outside would have been adventurous.  We got soaked walking the 100 meters from the train station to the hotel.  Since we only had one pair of shoes each and few clothes since it was a weekend trip, we didn't want to spend the whole next day still wet. So instead we made our own fun and the next day was beautiful! We met up with one of the volunteer guides, who told us about the five storey temple and the surrounding area. 

We had lunch with him and then headed to Tōdai-ji. Which is the tallest wooden structure in the world. Apparently it used to be bigger, but when it was rebuilt they had to make it one third smaller in width.  The temple is filled with amazing wooden statues and a bronze Buddha.  There was also a museum nearby that had many older artifacts from these temples. Apparently the temples in Nara have burned down many times (some has many has 100 times) because they were always built with wood, and well, wood burns.  The wooden temples though, were always topped with fish tails (see picture, golden tails on roof) in the hopes that the building would be protected from fire.  Since fish are from the water, than the whole building is "submerged" in water with the fish tails at the top proving it! 

The park surrounding the Tōdai-ji temple is populated by over 1,000 deer.  Who are quite happy to come up to you and try to steal any food you might have.  There are vendors around the area providing a rice snack to feed the deer - but as you can see it is difficult even to get to the vendors.  All in all - the deer were lovely and nothing like the more aggressive monkeys we have here in Hong Kong.

Even though we only had one day in Nara it was worth it. I was a little temple fatigued at the end of our three days in Japan, but that also was worth it. I love to be able to see the slightly more out of the city place in Japan, since the landscape is so beautiful and everywhere is so easy to get around. Although I fortunately have my husband, who has been learning Japanese for 7 years. This means we can mostly get by in Japanese and that helps massively!

After a long day around Nara – we of course had to visit a yarn shop. I found this lovely one and wanted to buy all their hand spun cotton – but alas couldn't afford it. So instead I bought some bulky denim blue yarn from a shop right next door.

But since the first shop I went into was so beautiful I had to post pictures here.  If you have the same sort of obsession with yarn as I do, then enjoy salivating over this yarn as I did while in Nara.