August 10th - Nara City - History

Today we went to Nara City. It is about 5 hour long trip however the beauty of Nara city's ancient ruins like the ones in Todaiji Temple are astounding.  We luckily got a rental car from the airport that was a SUV and so we were not crowded. We took turns driving after we left out hotel at around 6am to reach Nara city by around 11am and since there were 5 of us decided to trade every hour. Unluckily we got to Nara city at 12am instead due to the many bathroom breaks we had to do because of Shamyl and the many food breaks we had to do because of Chase. It was hot that day as well, probably around 88 degrees Fahrenheit, nevertheless once we reached Nara city we went to Todaiji temple straight away which houses the world's largest bronze gilded Buddha. The temple used to be near the Ancient capital of Japan. Although none of us were Buddhists we still admired the craftsmanship that was needed to create the Buddha. We found out that the Buddha was 15 meters which is 49 feet high. Also we didn't know this when we were coming to Nara city but the world's largest bronze gilded Buddha is also housed inside of the world's largest wooden building, it is 48 meters in height which is 157 feet. This made Todaiji Temple even more remarkable. The pillars showed that this place is very old but still standing as even the paint was staring to wear off of the building. We all wondered how the Japanese made such a big building with wood and such a long time ago. Besides the Buddha however there were also many more beautiful statues of what seemed to us were demons or characters of Japanese tales. These statues to were made out of wood and were still very tall. The time then started to get late and it was eventually 6pm which might not seem long but the thing was since we were to busy touring the Temple we lost tack of time and since it took 5 hours to five back to Tokyo we needed to leave. Then to everyone's shock Chase said he was hungry and wouldn't leave till we had some food. So we started to look at nearby restaurant and we found a place that served authentic Japanese sushi and we all went. The place was really cheap and we also got a good meal so for anyone that visits to see the largest bronze gilded Buddha in the world or the worlds largest wooden building I would recommend that you eat at Maguro Koya because the experience was truly magnificent. Kush and Mohir went to sleep during the car ride and so Zuhare,Chase, and Shamyl had to drive on our way back to Tokyo. Once we got home it was around midnight and so we went straight to bed without eating any dinner because of the fact that we were really late and also that we were late and tired from driving, or atleast some of us were unlike Kush and Mohir.