Castles, shrines, temples, and deer

Day 9  Wednesday, November 20, 2019    Osaka and on to Kyoto

We are visiting the Kasuga Shrine at the Nara Deer Park, in Nara, after departing Osaka and before reaching Kyoto. On either side of the path were these hundreds of "night lanterns". We started the day touring the Osaka Castle, then visited a popular Osaka shopping area for lunch, bused here to the deer park, and arrived in Kyoto after dark.

Breakfast was similar to what was offered in China, in that there were numerous offerings, and most were novel. But we managed just fine. Our first destination was this Osaka Castle. On the bus ride there, which was a long distance because our hotel was far from the downtown, Gary introduced us to the city, the country, and the language. He taught us "good morning" (ohio gozaimus), "thank you" (arigato, or arigato gozaimus), "hello" (konichiwah), "yes" (high), "no" (ee-ech), and "where is it?" (doko-deska).

As an introduction to our tour, here's a map showing where we covered during our week. The map shows Honshu, the primary island. (North of Honshu is Hokkaido, where Sapporo is located.  The island south of Hiroshima is Shikoku. The other main island is to the west, Kyushu.) Osaka and Kyoto are there just left of center, then we drove east to a middle-of-nowhere resort on the Pacific Ocean southeast of Nagoya, then we went to Mt Fuji on our way to Yokohama, and finally a bit north to Tokyo.

Osaka is Japan's 2nd-largest city. In the 7th and 8th centuries it served briefly as the imperial capital. It continued to flourish during the Edo Period (1603–1867, also called the Tokugawa Shogunate) and became known as a center of Japanese culture. Following the opening of the country in 1867 (when the emperor, Meiji, took over ruling from the shoguns), Osaka greatly expanded in size and underwent rapid industrialization.  Today, Osaka is Japan's major financial center.

The photos of the Osaka Castle moat here, above, and in yesterday's post show how massive this castle was, covering 15 acres. It was begun by a shogun in 1583 and finished in 1597. The guy died and passed it onto his son. Just 18 years later, the new shogun from Edo (what Tokyo was called back then) came and destroyed the castle and took over this shogunate as well.

Gary made sure we knew this shogun's name, because he referred back to him numerous times during our week - his name was Tokugawa.  The Tokugawa Shogunate lasted between 1600 and 1867, and was the final feudal military government before being replaced by the Meiji Restoration (restoring the emperor as Japan's leader).

Gary explained that when Tokugawa defeated the castle, he completely destroyed it, and then decided to build a new one on top of the ruins.

This is the main structure inside the castle walls, called a tenshu. The original was built in 1628, but burned down in 1665 after a lightning strike. In 1843, after decades of neglect, the castle got much-needed repairs and the tenshu was rebuilt.

In 1868, just a year after the Meiji Restoration, the castle fell to the new anti-shogunate/pro emperor loyalists. Because the tenshu was always being burned from lightning strikes, since it was the highest structure around, they rebuilt it out of iron and concrete in 1931. But only 14 yrs later, near the end of the world war, Allied bombs destroyed the castle since it had become one of Japan's largest arsenals, with over 60,000 workers. The bombing destroyed 90% of the castle and killed 332 workers.

The Osaka Castle and tenshu we see today were reconstructed in 1997.

This massive stone wall was just inside the entrance to the castle after crossing the wide moat. It is called Octopus Stone, and was built in 1624 when Tokugawa was rebuilding his new castle on top of the ruins of the original. It was meant to be a barrier to invaders who might breech the moat. It weighs 108 tons and is 646 square feet.

Our next stop was Shinsaibashi and Dotonbori, a crowded tourist shopping and dining area, where we had plenty of time to look around and find lunch. The next eight photos illustrate the look of busy Dotonbori Street, where we walked about 1/3 mile.

 Well, this place sells crab!

 A clam, and Spiderman.

 I see the cow, but what is that black thing with what looks like a hand grenade?

 A hand holding sushi!

 Red octopus!

Way down the street, we got to this spot where a bridge led to the other side of the canal. This was where Janet and I decided to decide on a place to eat. By the way, Gary had told us not to expect to find any trash cans, and he was right. Everything was so clean, it was counter-intuitive to me that there would be no trash cans as opposed to lots of them. Since the many take-outs along the street were served in paper or plastic and people ate them immediately, where did they dispose their trash??

Also from this bridge we could see the famous Glico man. Our UTO itinerary specifically mentioned seeing this icon of Glico Candy, the company that makes Pocky. Originally installed in 1935, the sign depicts a giant athlete on a blue track. It has been altered on several occasions to celebrate events such as the World Cup or to show support for the Osaka baseball team. This current version is the sixth, which uses LEDs when it lights up after dark.

Janet and I found a little restaurant with a menu with photos, so we managed. We then walked back to where we started, got on the bus, and headed north toward Kyoto. Gary explained that Japan has 47 prefectures, which seemed to me similar to our states. Each prefecture's chief executive is a directly elected governor. Osaka is in its own prefecture, and Kyoto is in its own, but on our drive between the two, we would pass through another, Nara.

 As we drove toward and into Nara, it was hilly and green and NOT 100% urban the way it was in China. A nice change of green scenery. Eventually we reached Nara Deer Park, where 1200 deer roam freely, as in my photo above.

We started by walking to the Kasuga Shrine within the park. There's a wandering deer, of course, and the stone "night lanterns" on the right, of which hundreds and hundreds were crammed in throughout the area. People pay to erect to them to "carry" their wishes, usually for a successful life in one form or another.

 Look at all the formal-looking men and other crowds leaving from the shrine! I was glad we were arriving after they all departed.

Here is our group going through the "required" shrine-washing ritual. Gary told us about this on the bus as we approached. At the purification fountain near a shrine's entrance, you take one of the ladles (as seen in the photo), fill it with fresh water and rinse both hands. Then you transfer some water into your cupped hand, rinse your mouth and spit the water beside the fountain. At all the shrines we visited during our visit, we went through this process. Gary also described the ritual for praying, but I don't recall that any of us did that at this particular shrine, so I will describe it later where I have photos.

With tame deer everywhere, it was fun to get close, as Mike is here. Of course, the deer is right between two night lanterns. The deer are able to roam freely and are believed to be sacred messengers of the Shinto gods that inhabit the shrine and surrounding mountainous terrain.

It was Janet's turn to pet a deer.

Here we are about to enter the shrine. Kasuga Shrine was begun in 768, and has been rebuilt many times. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We were inside the shrine, and this photo looks back at the entry gate. I was not expecting the shrine to be open like that. I assumed a shrine was like a church, I guess, enclosed inside an elaborate structure like the gate there. Not so!

 We then walked back down the hill, down the road, and out into the broad park with its colorful trees and roaming deer. As you can see, they had some beautiful settings.

So beautiful, in fact, that this wedding couple was having its photos taken there.

Deer and tourists were all over the park.

 The tree colors were spectacular.

The little creek added to the bucolic setting. Poor Janet was not able to come down to this park because her ankle and hip were getting too sore. 

There they are again, with a visitor in the background wearing a geisha gown. During our tour, we were to see hundreds of Japanese tourists wearing these rented traditional clothes. It was always pretty cool to see.

You could purchase deer crackers to feed them, and many were doing this. But those critters would get pretty aggressive when they knew a person had the crackers.

I liked this scene, so I got a photo.

I have no more photos for this day. We continued on north to Kyoto and arrived after dark. Gary told us all about the hotel's bath house, and encouraged us to give it a try. Yes, you go in naked, but men and women have separate baths. There was a routine for taking a bath too, which I'll mention tomorrow since Janet and I did it on our 2nd night there.

Gary also mentioned several places we could venture out on our own for dinner or sightseeing. Since Janet was still nursing a sore ankle, we decided to buy dinner items from the convenience store down the street. I walked down there and bought two noodle cups (the hotel room had the usual water-boiling pots), some small sandwiches, and a couple beers. But did we have enough space in our hotel room to sit, eat, and move? Barely...

One of our indelible Japanese memories were the TINY hotel rooms this night on through to the end. When we arrived at our Kyoto hotel and opened the door to our room, we were stunned by how there was so little room besides the bed. There was no room for the suitcases other than on the beds, but then to use the beds, we needed to close them and put them in the narrow entrance way, blocking the way in or out. And, the amount of space on the counter was so minimal, we could barely set anything out. (The photo above is our room in Tokyo, since I didn't take photos of our rooms in Kyoto or Hamanako.)

Needless to say, eating our dinner in the room was a real challenge due to the tiny space! Also, as I recall, at no time during our China or Japan hotels did the TVs have anything in English that resembled news or anything else of interest. We read, we called home, we uploaded photos, and finally we went to sleep.