Japanese Deer – Where to, Gumshoe?

Osaka/Nara (Day 45): Sakura and Deer

April 14, 2016

After such a rainy night, we woke up to blue and sunny skies. Our plan for today was to visit Nara, a small city that is about 30 minutes away from Osaka. After Kyoto, Nara has the most historical sights (temples and shrines) in Japan. But more importantly (for me), Nara is home to a lot of wild (but very tame) deer that roam around the parks. I had been waiting to go to Nara for a while and was quite excited to see the deer after getting a small taste of it while in Miyajima.

While we were getting ready to head out, I received an email from an old manager of mine from EY. He had just gotten back from Japan (Kansai region, where we are now) and told me about a cherry blossom festival hosted by the Japan Mint (in Osaka) that should be in full bloom right now. It sounded interesting because the Japan Mint has over 100 different breeds of cherry blossom (and over 300 trees overall) that line the river walkway. We looked online and saw that the last day of the festival was today, so we decided to check it out before heading to Nara.

When we arrived at the train station closest to the Japan Mint, there were police all over directing traffic. We thought there was a police incident since they weren’t letting pedestrians through on one side of the bridge. We later discovered that the reason why there was crowd control and so many police officers around was because of the cherry blossom festival.

When we made it to the grounds, it was quite crowded (but not too crazy). The cherry blossoms had fully bloomed and some already had quite a bit of green to them. They all looked so beautiful and I liked how the walkway was one way so you could walk in sync with everyone else down the 500m cherry blossom walkway. We spent a lot of time stopping and taking pictures of the beautiful blossoms and looking at all the different types that we haven’t seen before. We each took a lot of pictures (Tim took over 100 pictures!).

We’re lucky that we happen to be in Japan for their sakura season as many people purposely plan to come to Japan specifically for their blossoms. Japan during April just fit into our trip planning perfectly so that’s why we’re here.

We’re happy that we got to catch the last day of the festival and lucky that my old manager emailed me this morning to let us know or else we wouldn’t have even known it was going on in Osaka (we didn’t do much research).

We had a few hours to go to Nara before we had to come back to Osaka to meet Tim’s Great Aunt for dinner. We took the JR train to Nara Station and walked towards Nara Park to see the deer and also some historical sights. My first impression of Nara is that it’s a very laid back town. I think because when we got to the station and walked out, I didn’t see a sea of people like in Kyoto. Even the main walking street to Nara Park didn’t have that many people walking along it, which was nice and relaxing.

When we made it to Nara Park, there were a lot of deer around. I kept wanting to stop and take pictures and pet them, but Tim kept saying there will be more as we go on so we don’t have to stop at each spot. He wanted to go to Todai-ji, a wooden temple that until 1998 was the largest wooden building in the world (Tim: pretty impressive for something built in 1709).

On our way to Todai-ji, there were crowds of deer, just roaming the park, resting in the shade, or chasing down people who would feed them. Around the park, there are vendors who sell deer food (stacks of round crackers) for 150 JPY = $1.75 CAD. My observation of the deer is that they’re very calm, until they see you have food and then they will follow you around and sometimes even tug at you if you don’t give them the crackers. Some people start to run away from the deer, which make the deer chase them… We saw a lot of Asian tourists hold the crackers and walk around with them holding them up high (teasing them), which made the deer more annoyed and more aggressive.

After walking around for a bit, I decided I wanted to try to feed the deer. I was a bit hesitant since I saw other people who fed them being a bit harassed by some deer in the process. I also figured they were teasing the deer so that’s why they were being aggressive. We bought a stack of crackers and the plan was to just hold on to the stack as we made our way back and we could feed deer along the way. Well, that plan didn’t last long as the deer knew I had them in my hands and followed us down a path. As soon as I turned around and tried to get the paper off that wrapped around the stack, they became aggressive and started to nibble at my shirt and backpack. I was panicking a bit and tried hard to get the crackers out as quickly as possible. One of the crackers got stuck to my shirt on my stomach and a bunch of deer tried to bite it off. Tim was taking a video of me the whole time.

Tim also decided he wanted to feed the deer. The deer seemed to have more respect for Tim and weren’t so aggressive with him while he was feeding them. We have videos of both our feedings, it’s quite a drastic difference.

Despite that semi-traumatizing experience of feeding the deer, I had a lot of fun in Nara. I enjoyed the peacefulness of the area and the deer were pretty cool. On our way back to the train station, we stopped by a takoyaki stand and shared an order of six.

We got back to into Osaka just in time to go back to our room to change (needed to change shirts after mine had deer saliva all over it). We met 7 Yi-Ma in our lobby downstairs and went for dinner in the department store top floor again, but this time to a traditional Kyoto style restaurant.

The restaurant is called Minokichi and is one of the oldest and historical restaurants (opened in 1716) in Kyoto (with a branch in Osaka). 7 Yi-Ma treated us to a very delicious and unique seven course meal. Everything was so beautifully put together and unique in flavours. We haven’t had such a traditional Japanese meal before, so it was a nice change from what we’re used to eating as Japanese food.

Second course was a special (Tim: white miso) miso soup that I forgot to take a picture of.

It was a wonderful meal and we’re so thankful for 7 Yi-Ma for taking us there and for being such a gracious host to us while we’re in Osaka. We’ll see her again on Sunday, before we leave for Tokyo.

After we finished dinner, we bought some yogurt from Family Mart for our breakfast tomorrow and just relaxed for the rest of the night.

Steps for today: 21, 500

Miyajima/Hiroshima/Osaka (Day 41): Oh Deer!

April 10, 2016

We woke up later than we planned on but the bed was really comfortable. Tim researched that high tide in Miyajima was around 11:00am so we were still good on time. We checked out of the hotel and left our bags there around 9:30am. We decided to just walk to Hiroshima Station since we just missed one of the street cars and didn’t see any other one in the near distance. The walk was actually really nice and refreshing.

We made it to Hiroshima Station with a bit of time to spare as the next train leaving for Miyajima was at 10:13am. I bought a tuna onigiri (110 JPY = $1.30 CAD) and grape juice (100 JPY = $1.20 CAD) from 7-Eleven for breakfast on the train. The train ride to Miyajima was only about 20 minutes (Tim: we caught an express train that only made a few stops), so it was a quick ride there. Once we arrived, we had to take a short ferry across to Itsukushima, where the famous O-torii Gate is in the water.

When we got off the ferry and walked a short distance through town towards the shrine and O-torii Gate, we were greeted by some friendly Japanese deer.

After we finished walking through the shrine and temple area. We walked around the streets of vendors, which mostly sold a Miyajima specialty called, “Momiji Manju”, which are pancake like cakes shaped in a maple leaf. Another popular local dish are oysters prepared all ways: fried, grilled, or raw.

We had to keep a close eye on the time since we had to return to Hiroshima, grab our bags from the hotel, and be back at the train station by 4:17pm to head to Osaka. Surprisingly, we didn’t feel as rushed as I thought we would, we were ahead of schedule by about an hour so I felt a lot more relaxed than I did yesterday thinking about today (Tim: just thinking about the possibility of not being on time can stress Kait out).

We made our way back to Hiroshima Station to have lunch. Since we failed at eating tsukemen last night, Tim found that there was a Bakudanya at the train station! Considering we were only in Hiroshima for 24 hours, we were able to eat two dishes that they’re “most known for”: okonomiyaki and tsukemen.

The final consensus was that Tim’s cold tsukemen was better. I can imagine eating it on a hot summer’s day, it would be really refreshing. I like how they give you paper bibs since there is a lot of splashing when you dip your noodles into the soup. (Tim: You can also choose the level of spiciness, with the (sane) range going from 1-20. I chose 3 and felt like it was a reasonable level of spice. You can go extreme and get levels up to the 100s though… I shudder to think.)

After lunch, we walked back to the hotel. We were really full from lunch so it was good to walk it off. The sun started coming out so it was actually really warm walking back. We had to switch to the shadier side of the street. We got back to the hotel and picked up our bags and caught the street car back to Hiroshima Station. I was happy that we were able to walk to and from the station and only took the street car back when we had our heavy backpacks (saved ourselves 640 JPY = $7.70 CAD) (Tim: and more importantly, got to take in the sights and sounds of the streets as a pedestrian).

We got back to Hiroshima with a half hour to spare before boarding our train to Osaka. It was important we didn’t miss this train because we were meeting Tim’s Great-Aunt (7th Aunt on my Dad’s Mom’s side) on the platform at the station. She knew our train number and which car we were in and said she would be waiting on the platform for us (she also does not have a cell phone). Once we arrived at Shin-Osaka station (after a 1.5hr ride from Hiroshima on the high-speed rail), she was there waiting for us!

Tim’s Great-Aunt has been living in Osaka since she was 26 after finishing her medical degree there. She came to our wedding (we just realized it’s our 6 month anniversary already), so it was nice to be able to see her again this year. Tim doesn’t know her exact age, but she’s still working 4 days at week at the hospital (very impressive).

We took the subway to the hotel she booked for us for a week to drop off our bags before dinner. Osaka definitely feels like a huge city compared to Hiroshima and Fukuoka. I could only imagine what it would be like when we get to Tokyo. Tim says it’s good I eased my way into Japan, so I wouldn’t be so shocked going to Tokyo.

Tim’s Great-Aunt is very kind and hospitable and booked us at the Sheraton Miyako Osaka for a week when she found out we were coming to Osaka. This hotel is the nicest hotel we have/will stay at on our trip (Tim’s scared I’m going to get spoiled now). When we walked into the lobby with our huge backpacks and our hoodies, it felt like we didn’t really belong. Our room is on a the 18th floor so it has great views of the city. It is a normal North American sized room, which feels huge compared to the Japanese sized rooms we’ve been staying at the last few days. We’re both really happy to be able to just settled down here for a week.

Once we dropped our bags off, Tim’s 7-Yi Ma (Great-Aunt) took us for dinner at a restaurant in the mall that’s connected to the hotel. The restaurant was on the top floor of the mall and specialized in unagi. Tim mentioned that last time he was here with Jessica, his Great Aunt always took them out for unagi so he predicted we would have that for dinner as well, and he was right. She ordered dinner sets for us as well as an appetizer of tamago (egg) with unagi inside and a skewer of unagi innards.

After a delicious meal, 7-Yi Ma brought us downstairs to the grocery store and bought us fruit. I was joking to Tim that she probably looked at us and thought we needed to eat more fresh fruit. She bought us strawberries and oranges. Japanese fruits are all so perfect looking. We just finished eating the strawberries, they were all very sweet.

We decided to just relax in the hotel and catch up on the blog and roughly plan out our week. Looking forward to spending time in one place (with a couple of day trips close by). I think if we had to move out of a hotel room each night, I would burn out very quickly.

As always it’s so nice to have family around, and 7-Yi Ma has been so sweet to us. I know we are extremely lucky to be surrounded by such loving families.

Our total steps today: 22,000