In which Sid and Doris meet (and smell) the Map-Eating Deer Of Nara and Sid Achieves Enlightenment.
There is much excitement as the procession of Stinky Old Vehicles are routed through the main park of Nara, with its famously charming and attractive deer.
That is, the SOVs are excited to see the deer and not vice versa. Traffic progress through the park is slow as everyone excitedly takes many close-up pictures of their first deer, before realising that there are about 1000 of the things and as rutting season is approaching the male deer are practising being both pushy and smelly. Yes, if you want to smell something even less attractive than an SOV (at least, to non-deer females) then the male Nara deer are a great solution.
The rally organisers have cleverly found a hotel which is part of the central station and so shares an enormous underground car park. Once one floor of this has been rendered satisfactorily unusable with a fug of unburned petrol and burned engine oil, we are free to explore the streets of Nara.
Which has a local Gaza demonstration in the main station forecourt. In this land of extreme conformity this is rather surprising.
We have the next morning off for some temple-visiting, and wander up the hill under a row of charming little lanterns. Much to our irritation, Mr G Translate says that there was a neighbourhood celebration of the mid-Autumn harvest moon last night, with drumming and music and fun, just 400 metres from our hotel. It is very, very annoying being illiterate.
Around the temple entrance are some very deeply-engraved characters, looking attractively mystical. Mr G T is not always the romantic tourists’ friend as he tells us that these are the main sponsors who paid for the renovation project.
Our destination is the large-est Buddha in the large-est wooden structure.
The structure is indeed very large and some patient Japanese schoolchildren are being told as much, in some detail.
In the far corner of the temple there is a hole carved in a pillar. It is said to be the same dimensions as one nostril on the statue of Buddha, and so if you crawl through it you will figuratively reach Buddha’s brain and general enlightenment and calm happiness. Sid feels that some zen is really needed after 18 days in a Mini.
The temple grounds interestingly do not claim to have the large-est cloisters in the world (Doris knows about this having researched the topic when learning about Salisbury Cathedral) but they really should do, and you could also use them for a couple of polo matches.
An information corner inside the temple commemorates the work of Priest Chogen, who led a project to rebuild the whole temple area after it was destroyed by “fires and natural disasters” in 1181. This puts the project neatly in line with Salisbury Cathedral, where planning stared in the late 1190’s and construction ran from 1220 to about 1260. Salibury’s project manager was Elias of Dereham, so we said a little hello from him to Priest Chogen.
