Day 4 & 5: Nara Park and "relaxed days"

Hello everyone :)

As you may have noticed, there hasn't been an entry for the last two days.

We could make up cool excuses right now, but we just hung out at an arcade and we've been hanging on ever since.

There are two entries for this today, one from 25.8 and one from 26.8.

Have fun :)

For Friday, August 25th, the plan was to go to Nara and discover the region there, but above all to visit the park with its wild deer.

So we leave the hotel at around 10:00 a.m. for the train station. Once there, it occurred to me (Jule) that we still had to buy a ticket because the station "Nara" was not included in our digital ticket on the mobile phone.

So I bought a ticket online and was happy how uncomplicated everything could be in Japan. Everything here is totally progressive.. isn't it?

Together we went through the gate to the station to the platform. But the rude awakening came on the platform when Moritz noticed that the ticket wasn't really a ticket, but rather a voucher that had to be redeemed at certain stations in order for it to become valid. Something like online tickets seems to be foreign to the Japanese.

The nearest train station where you could redeem this was one stop away, but we couldn't get out of our train station because we had already checked in. Of course you could talk to the railway staff, but our Japanese and my lack of courage didn't really allow that.. So Moritz, who was just as lost as I was, had to try to talk to the conductor, who signaled to us that we could use our ticket allowed to drive.

So we drove to the next town and cheated our way out of the station with Google translator to redeem our ticket.

We finally had our ticket in hand and didn't have to do fare evasion anymore.

We made our way to Nara and arrived relatively quickly by bus and train.

When we arrived, we first bought a couple of deer biscuits, 10 pieces for €1.20 and hoped to be able to use them for a relatively long time.

But a deer spotted the biscuits in Moritz's hand immediately and in no time at all seven deer were gathered around us.

Moritz tried to save himself, but no chance. They ran after him, nudged him, chewed on his t-shirt and just tried everything they could to get his attention so he handed over his cookies. Now that a few deer had discovered me, I had no choice but to frantically flee and run away.

After we got rid of our biscuits within 3 minutes, the deer practically forced us, we had no choice but to explore the area.

The park where the deer lived was very nice. There was a lake, many temples and stalls where you could get odds and ends. But especially Moritz it was difficult to enjoy this great atmosphere. The heat was just unbearable. When hunger came along, the mood threatened to change. We quickly looked for something to eat and found it after about 30 minutes: it was supposed to be a Japanese udon bar.

The food was very tasty and cheap, but above all it was prepared quickly. Within about 2 minutes we had our food on the table. That is unimaginable in Germany. Incidentally, it has been the case in every restaurant so far that the food was on the table after 5 minutes at the latest.

Strengthened by the meal, we wandered through the shopping arcades.

I remembered that I wanted to visit a garden with a lake and a local temple (much to Moritz's chagrin).

So we hiked up hills, down the road to find both. Here, too, the mood threatened to change again, because the weather was unbearable and Moritz just couldn't take it anymore. I tried to soothe him with ice cream, which I think worked quite well.

Luckily, when we arrived at the shrine, it was drizzling a bit, so that we could cool down a bit.

The shrine was really very impressive. The way to this one was graced by hundreds of stone lanterns, but also by the deer (which still wanted crackers...).

In the shrine I decided to pay the entrance fee (about 3€) while Moritz was waiting for me outside completely exhausted.

The interior, but also the area around the shrine was very impressive.

Since this shrine was a Shinto shrine, I was lucky enough to see a shrine priest praying.

I also performed my first prayer at a prayer place myself. That was very nice, because I was all alone in this place, surrounded by forests.

The shrine also has a special room that is completely dark in itself, but is filled with many many glowing lanterns. That looked really beautiful and I will never forget this moment!

After I had finished looking at everything, I went back to Moritz, who was waiting longingly and sweating on a bench. I had the feeling that he couldn't wait for the return trip. The return trip was fairly easy and we didn't have to put our bad/non-existent Japanese to the test again.

Totally exhausted from the day, we decided to take a little nap (if you can still call 7:00 p.m. noon, but students see the world differently anyway) to gather strength for our evening excursion.

We ended up in an arcade with 5 floors and a volume level of what felt like 20 jackhammers. The blinking lights, crowds of people and the smell of sweaty guys dancing didn't help the situation either.

But we simply repressed that and went to play.

Moritz played his favorite drumming game again and I also tried a new device.

But even when I set it to “Easy”, everything just went much too fast for me. I think the Japanese just have it when it's easy for them..

But the big fun was still ahead of us.

We found several silver coins that could be used in a machine and of course we tried them out right away.

It was really a lot of fun and we kept going around hoping to find more coins like this. In total we found about 30-40 such coins on the ground, but we also discovered 400 yen! These were also immediately invested.

Before we knew it, it was 00:30 and the shop was closing (apparently they have a different notion of “open 24 hours here”).

We then started our way home straight away.

Moritz wanted us to have a "relaxed day", so that was planned for the next day.

Let's see how it will be ;)

Thanks for reading :>

Saturday 26.08,

Hi, this time again.

We're glad you were able to set it up and want to know what was going on with us today. At the beginning of 26.08. we first caught up on what was necessary for a long time, namely sleeping in. After we did this, of course, breakfast was fetched in the nearest convenience store and the same was eaten promptly. Before that, though, we checked out the Osaka Running Man, a pretty well-known sign in the city (as if there weren't anything else).

Following this admittedly rather unspectacular activity, we drove to Shinsekai. This is an older borough that hasn't really been renovated since the early 2000s. There we found all kinds of classic tourist traps. Besides very small retro arcades and shooting ranges (both bow and airgun) there were a lot of cute little shops that we browsed. Of course, we also visited the local shrine in this district, although the heat on the way there really got to me (Moritz). However, I tried to pretend that my ancestors endured the cold winters of Central Europe, not the hot, humid climate of East Asia. I felt a bit like a polar bear in the Sahara. No matter, there are only four weeks I have to endure. The shrine itself was very beautiful and had an adjoining graveyard that looked different than the ones I know. Each tombstone had more the character of a pillar with written characters. Sometimes there were flowers and candles on them.

When we got tired of the shrine, we made our way back to familiar territory by returning to our neighborhood. We quickly looked for something to eat there, since we were getting hungry. We ate ramen, as you may have seen in the group. It was delicious and was exactly what we needed at the moment. After we ate we went to the nearby shopping center to do a bit of shopping. I got pants and a bunch of keys there, and there was a bracelet for Jule. After our visit to the department store, we went back to our hotel, which was a good fit, since the 10% chance of rain on our weather app suddenly seemed pretty real and it started pouring rain. Arrived at the hotel we rested first to prepare for the evening.

After we both regained our strength, we actually wanted to go back to the arcade. However, since we didn't want to go into the same one as yesterday, we looked for an alternative, which turned out to be more difficult than expected. Most arcades are designed for gambling, where there are slot machines (or slots) and pachinko (basically the same thing in green). After the fourth hall, in which there were only rows and rows of these two machines, we both got hungry. Since Jule didn't feel like another meal from a convenience store, we went looking for a restaurant. After quite a while of searching, we've probably found the holy grail. One restaurant (which also served vegetarian food, because that was what mattered) had the menu of a lifetime. If each of us ordered ¥1100 worth of food, there was an option to drink as much beer as you wanted for two hours for an extra ¥319. I think you all know where this is going. Of course, as soon as we found out about it, we immediately said "yes" and quickly chose something to eat before the first beers fluttered in. In and of itself a brilliant offer, although I would have driven the country into bankruptcy with five or six of my acquaintances and relatives. However, the food was tasty, as was the beer. We even ordered the tomato beer without really knowing what was on the menu. In and of itself it wasn't bad, although I wouldn't order it again and my German heart bled a little.

After the two hours of beer excess, we decided to go back to yesterday's arcade, which was supposed to be open 24 hours a day, but was closed when we arrived. Well, if they don't want our money, they'll invest it elsewhere. Now we're back in the hotel and going to sleep soon. Have a good time everyone and see you soon.