Location: Nara and Kyoto, Japan

On the second day in Osaka, I went on another field trip, this time to Nara and Kyoto. Silversea organized this three day / two night “land adventure” for the world cruise travelers – at no additional cost to us. Which is nice.

So, of course, it was bucketing down rain.

We boarded seven buses and started our journey by visiting Nara, one of the old capitals of Japan. We stopped at the Todai-ji Buddhist temple. They protect the local deer. A lot. Seems the local Shinto spirits arrived in Kyoto by riding deer, so this area considers them sacred, which the deer abuse to no end.

There are “deer cookie” stalls where you can purchase several cookies to feed to the deer, and the deer have roaming gangs near such stalls. At least the authorities remove their antlers for innocent cookie donator’s safety. There are no gates, so the deer roam all over this part of the city freely, forcing drivers to stop as they cross the street.

We crossed an immense wooden gate, but what attracted me were the paper lanterns on the side.

For the first time I saw “no drone” signs.

Then we rounded the wall and turned the corner to the temple, one of the largest wooden structures in the world. There are open areas under the door eave to allow the Buddha to see out of the building.

And a big Buddha he is.

He was flanked by two smaller statues. I think they are from when there were more temples on the grounds.

There were two guardian spirits making sure we didn’t do anything too heinous.

After lunch in the Nara Hotel, we visited the Kasuga Shrine. Their grounds were much more in the hills and woods compared to yesterday’s Osaka shrine. And they still had untouchable deer.

Their stone lanterns had paper pasted over the openings. Seems this was another way to request spirit assistance.

Similar to yesterday you need to purify yourself before entering the grounds proper. Here they had a deer fountain. Today we had different tour guides than yesterday, and they were all spooked I already knew how to do this.

I find the Japanese wonderfully unabashed about taking your money at shrines (Shinto) and temples (Buddhist). In the below image there are “stores” where you can purchase good luck charms and items to write your requests on.

In addition to stone lanterns there are brass lanterns donated to the shrine, but these are periodically replaced. Below is an image of the new and old lanterns.

After the shrine we skipped the next temple to get out of the rain and went straight to the hotel in Kyoto. We gathered for dinner in the hotel, and were entertained by actual Geisha and Maiko (note: In Kyoto, geisha are called “Geiko”). Now, a gaijin like me would have no way of really knowing if they were true geisha, but they danced wonderfully and spent over an hour walking amongst us.

I dislike treating people from other cultures as if they are cartoon animals at a theme park, but they encouraged us to take pictures and broken-English conversed with everyone who showed interest.

Maiko are apprentice geiko, so here is Cruise Boy’s quick list of how to identify between the two. Maiko will have:

• Colorful kimono
• Red on the collar of their inner kimono
• Their actual hair made up (geiko get to use a wig)
• Fancy hair pins
• A long obi, almost like a cape
• The sleeves of their kimono will hang much lower

But beware, in Kyoto all sorts of Japanese and foreign tourists dress up as geisha.