Deer and Fish

Kyoto, Nara & Uji, Japan

Nara should be renamed Deerland. They should build rides and charge admission. There could be a deer mascot named Bruce the Buck. We went there the day before yesterday. It was very very hot, so we didn`t wander around till later in the afternoon.

The deer were everywhere. They were the small fuzzy Bambi kind of deer, not the big scary deer of British Columbia. These deer were practically domesticated and could probably be taken home as pets.

People were feeding them biscuits and the deer would bow their heads! I saw a group of school girls giggling and bowing to one of the animals. It just went back and forth. The girl bowed. The deer bowed. The girl gave him food. Absolutely adorable.

Yesterday we visited the Manga Museum in Kyoto. It is basically a Manga library where people are silently reading on benches. I grabbed a few books from the small English section and got a bit obsessed with Time Stranger Kyoko. She`s a princess who`s pretending to be a normal girl, but she has to reveal her identity when her school friends are attacked! Then she has to free her twin sister, who`s been in a coma all of her life, by collecting magical stones and telepaths. It was great.

I would recommend a visit to Uji... They are tea drinking and cormorant fishing obsessed. We went to a traditional tea ceremony. The green tea was frothy and very tasty. The women there were very kind and we obviously didn`t know what we were doing. But we sat on the mat and politely accepted what they gave us. I wish that I spoke Japanese, because I feel like I`m missing out on the context of 90% of the things that we do.

Like the cormorant fishing that we did later in the evening. We got onto a boat and just bobbed on the water until the fishing started. The young woman had about 5 birds attached to strings. She would grab one and choke it until it spat out the fish it had eaten. There was a burning bundle of wood hanging off the boat, which I assume drew the fish in? Or maybe it was just so that they could see the birds and fish? I don`t know, but it was very fun to watch.