On the road to Nara

Sunday March 26

After breakfast and check out, we left Osaka by bus on the way to Nara.

First stop was a buddhist temple in Yamayo Koriyama. It was small with a pretty garden and flowering cherry. We were greeted by the monk with a tea ceremony ( shoes off, kneeling or crosslegged on floor, tough on painful knees).

We wandered around for an hour taking photographs before we were offered a lovely buddhist vegetarian bento lunch.

We then went to Yakushiji temple (Buddhist) and saw a lovely procession of children in kimonos to celebrate an annual religious feast. We wandered the grounds seeing a bonsai exhibition, a sutra learning centre, and then back to the main temple for a wonderful performance by some drummers. It was awe inspiringly rythmic accompanied by strange weedy instruments that sounded like bagpipes. It started to rain so we had fun stopping by a shinto shrine taking photo's of ladies in kimonos with umbrellas walking by among the typical orange red shinto pillars with one of us being the spotter shouting out " here comes white umbrella" or "pink kimono" so we could get cameras ready for that fleeting shot. It is a fun group of photographers with lots of jokes and laughter.

We checked into the lovely century old Nara hotel set in a gorgeous garden with a view of the oldest pagoda in the area.

 It was raining heavily as we ventured out in the evening to our meeting with a shinto priest for a lantern lighting ceremony. They only do this twice a year when they light over two thousand antique lanterns. Thanks to Cano san the Japanese photographer, who helped organize the trip, we were by ourseves in this breathtakingly beautiful setting. 

The Kasuga shrine is in Nara park famous for the very tame deer roaming around the temples and shrines. The ten minute walk in a woodsy area full of stone lanterns  leading up to the shrine was already wonderful but then entering the courtyard with the priest was magical. Brass, copper and iron lanterns everywhere, twinkling away followed by a quick blessing in front of the shrine.

They had left a couple of dozen lanterns for us to light, instructing us to make a wish whilst handing us the votive to place in our lantern of choice.

It was a very spiritual experience that can only be the highlight of our trip.

Back at our lovely hotel we had a wonderful french meal with a view of the lit up pagoda.

It was a spiritual day with reflection as I received word from the office that a colleague-friend had died. We have been learning to write haikus, so in memory of her  here is my haiku of the day.

a grave a prayer

memories of friends now gone

at peace in any faith