Do you understand?

Last weekend, I went to Nara. It was such a great time. It was so nice to get away for a bit, even for only 1 day. Hiro and I woke up early and took the shinkansen to kyoto, then switched to JR to nara. Our plan was to see this one temple first (its about 10 minutes by train from nara) and then come back to nara and see the deer, the really big buddha and some other sights.

well we transfered to the train from nara to go to the first place and this old man approaches us, asking us where we were headed. we told him and he told us that he was also going there and could show us the way. we shrugged and followed. why not, it will save us time. well that was our first mistake. he seemed harmless enough on the train. but once we got the station, he started seeing out others to join us on his volunteer tour. he was pretty demanding. but we continued along. once we finally got to the temple, i was done with him. hahha. he kept reading the descriptions in english, but i didnt understand him. but after every sentence he asked "do you understand?" i always responded "yes" he told us that we should only take pictures when he said it was ok, we didnt have time (it was bad enough we only wanted to stay 1.5 hours, and a good tour would last at least 3hours) but i just kept taking pictures. i mean hey, if he was going to stop at every wooden beam and inform us is was made of cyprus wood, then certainly i can take a few pictures.

i zoned out for most of the time, being a horrible person and letting hiro get stuck with him. finally we ended the tour. whew. safe. we looked around a little more, then ate lunch, then walked back to the station. and who do you think just happened to run into us on the way back? thats right. our obnoxious tour guide. we had to ride on the train with him. and when we got to nara, we ran away from him.


the rest of the day was so great. we wandered around. fed the deer some deer crackers. we rented a little boat and paddled around on the pond. we saw some sights. we saw lots of greenness. we saw the big buddha. we were tired. finally we went to a really nice restaurant for dinner. so much food. but good! then we headed back to nagoya. all in all it was a great great day.

enjoy the pictures.