Day 11 Osaka castle, Nara Big Buddha

Alex

This morning I woke up with at my Osaka family's house and was treated to pizza bread for breakfast. It was basically a pizza on a slice of Texas Toast. Then they dropped me off at the train station with written directions on how to get to Osaka Castle Station. I had to take two trains to get there but I managed fine by matching the kanji with the correct station. We all got to the station on time so we were able to start with our activities. 

From the station we walked to Osaka castle. It was a beautiful castle surrounded by a moat and a lot of fortifications. We finally went into the castle; which was converted to a museum. It was 8 floors tall, and I had a lot of fun reading about the history of the castle. 

Next we took a train to Nara. We then got off the train and took a bus up a small hill towards Todaiji Temple. As we were riding the bus, we could see small deer relaxing on the side of the road. People were able to just walked up to these deer and pet them. I was really surprised that the deer didn't seem too scared of humans. After about 10 minutes we got off the bus and walked to the Daibutsu-Big Buddha. This is the largest statue of Buddha in all of Japan, so it was an awesome experience being able to see it. The temple was pretty crowded, but we got through it okay. In the back of the temple there's a small hole in a pillar that represents the width of the Buddha's nostril! It was small enough to the ground that people could crawl through. Mostly everyone made it through though some of us could not. 

When we exited the temple, we began to feed the deer that inhabited the temple grounds. We all quickly learned that deer will chase you and bite you if you have any sort of food with you. It was a lot of fun being able to pet and feed the deer because they seemed so cute and gentle. 

Following our experience with the deer at Todaiji Temple, we got to choose where we wanted to go for lunch. I went to an Italian restaurant that cost about $6 for my meal and it was still delicious. 

Next we went to Osaka Industrial high school. We went into a small classroom with some of their students and they taught us a little bit about what they were studying in English. Then we got to teach them how to do the Chicken Dance. Eventually we got to do it together and we all had a good time. We also got to use our photo album to explain to the high school students about your lives. All the students seemed really interested in what we had to share.