Paparazzi and Deer

Posted byfotinitheo1Posted inUncategorized
For our last day in Kyoto we headed to the temple at Nara.  Here is Randy with a Starbucks and a big smile on his face half due to coffee and half due to quick and easy train travel. 
The main attraction at Nara is Todaiji, one of the Seven Great Temples, where there is the largest bronze statue of the Buddha in the world! The other attraction at Naara are hundreds of deer who walk around waiting some crackers.  Randy and I of course decided to buy some crackers and feed the deer. How could anyone refuse these cute faces!
And then this happened, what I like to call Randy’s paparazzi moment.  Let’s pretend that the below picture sequence is what Randy’s life would look like if he was a celebrity, let’s say Vin Diesel, and all these deer were paparazzi. 
Here is what I like to call ‘A Day in the Life’-
At first you are all for the attention and pose for photos willingly.  

It’s amusing how eager they can be for just one more photo and then just one more photo.

Then you start to feel a little claustrophobic and start feeling that maybe the paparazzi are getting a little too close. 

No matter how quickly you run out of the Ivy those paparazzi are still right there.

You try giving up and posing for pictures to keep them happy.

But that just doesn’t work and the paparazzi just get more aggressive. They’re all just dying to get something for the tabloids. 

You throw up your hands in defeat and that doesn’t work either.

Then you have that moment when you come really close to that Justin Bieber moment where you punch a paparazzo or break his camera.

You just can’t win and they just keep coming!  

So you to decide to throw your hands up and quit show business. Or in Randy’s case fling all the crackers at the deer and beg them to leave you alone 🙂

Hey, it worked!

This guys really liked his cracker!

Maybe we should have read this sign first! I do feel bad about that old lady being mugged by a deer, it’s probably the first mugging to ever happen in Japan.

I learned from Randy’s attack and had only a calm and zen encounter with the deer.

 Ok, maybe the paparazzi attached a bit.

Maybe deer really are meant to be seen from a distance. They seem so calm when drinking from a stream!

After yesterday’s temple fest I wasn’t too excited about yet another temple, how wrong I was. This temple was built in 752 as the head temple of all provincial Buddhist temples of Japan and it was pretty impressive!

Then because we didn’t have toddlers to lug around we took the train back to Kyoto and then another train right back out to another area in the outskirts of Kyoto called the Bamboo forest.  We walked around the forest for about 10 minutes and were so tired we debated hiring one of these guys to take us back to the station.

But we rallied and walked around.

Here we are waiting for our train back.  Two TIRED travellers.

But once again after a quick shower and change we were on our way out to dinner. Tonight was Yakitori.

Don’t we look refreshed?!

 Best two things on the menu, chicken meatball skewers with yolk to dip and fried peppers.

 After dinner we walked around an old geisha district of Kyoto, Gion.

This district was pretty locked down. We went into one place for a drink and they looked at us like we were crazy to be just walking in (apparently all places around there with geishas require a known customer to bring you in. But then  they very nicely led us next door where we were allowed in.

I guess this place will do.

Flashback to my earlier post about clean windows, this picture is through a glass window of the view we had during our drink.  

On our walk home we decided to stop for one more and had one of those amazing vacation moments where you walk into the exact right place for you at the exact right moment. The bar had 7 seats and two were filled by the bartender’s friends. All three were so warm and welcoming and we had so much fun we ended up staying out much later than we had planned.  Completely worth it, even when I set my alarm and we woke up the next morning for our train and rushed to get out before we realized that my phone was still on Manila time and we had already missed the train.  Thankfully Japan has trains all the time and we just hopped on the next one. Still completely worth it!

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