Saturday, November 12, 2016 – Tokyo – Nara – Osaka

Had a great last few days. Didn’t get to do a blog entry since I was busy. 

Visited with Yutaka in Tokyo and was nice to re-connect. 

Met with Jasbir, who did the Shikoku ohenro back in 2015. I enjoyed following his blog and we had emailed back and forth. It was good to meet and share our ohenro experience. He gave me some of his beautiful photos. Appears osettai never ends. He gave me a couple flower ones to give to my mom and auntie, since they liked my flower photos.

After my Tokyo visit, took the Nozomi high speed train to Osaka and then local train to Oji station (near Nara), where I stayed at another wonderful AirBnB for two nights. The host was great and nice. Stay in a beautiful traditional style Japanese house.

Yesterday, I took the train to Nara, where the deer, freely roam in the park. Visited Todaiji Temple, which has a massive Vairocana statue known as Daibutsu – Great Buddha.

The legend has it when the Kasuga Taisha Shine was founded, the god is said to come to Nara  riding a white deer. Since then, the deer have been respected and protected as divine messangers by local people.

There were lots of school groups. I was stopped by a couple school groups that were doing a project to practice their English. They asked questions in English,  read and showed picture about the history of Temple or deer. They gave me a small orgami mobile as a thank you gift for doing the survey. I gave them a Canada flag pin, which they were happy to receive. They asked for a photo, so I got to get one of them as well. They were a great group and very nice way to get to meet them, while they were practicing their English skills to explain about the sites of Nara.

Here are some pictures of Todaiji Temple and you can see there were many people.

I also got to visit Toshodaiji Temple in Nara. It was much quieter with very few people.

There was an interesting shrine set in the forrest, with it roofs covered in moss.

The fall colors are starting to get more vivid and found a few more of the beautiful fall flowers.

I took the train back to Osaka and met with Shinji for lunch of Okonomiyaki . Had a good chance to talk about my ohenro experience and Shinji shared about a 33 temple pilgrimage around Osaka Kansai region (Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage), which is the oldest pilgrimage in Japan. Here is a link with more information:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saigoku_Kannon_Pilgrimage
We had a good discussion and enjoyed Shinji explanations of the Heart Sutra mantra. How it can be used to access the Akashic records. Here is a link which explains it more:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akashic_records
It was an interesting discussion.

Shinji went grocery shopping with me and helped with explaining the different Japanese foods. We then said our farewells, and I checked into the hotel and finished my last winter shopping spree. I took the train back to Yodagawa and brought some Japanese pottery at the second hand shop Taz took me too. Thanks Taz. Then off to Tokyo Hands for some more shopping.

My box is now packed and ready to be checked in as my luggage. 

It will be a long travel day tomorrow, as I bid my fond farewell to Japan.