Japan Day 6 - Nara

 Japan Day 6 - Nara

The four of us packed on an early commuter train

Today we got our JR Passes to start using them on the bullet trains to travel to the cities south of Tokyo. There are several types of bullet trains and our pass doesn't cover the Nozomi (highest class) so we took the Sakura which was second best, with minimal stops. We got reservations since I was already at the JR desk getting the passes, but after that trip, we just used the non-reserved cars, which always worked out fine. 

Watch Out - Deer!

Our first destination was Kyoto and the small town of Nara 30 miles to the southeast.  Nara is famous for its "bowing deer." The deer are trained to bow in exchange for treats. Unfortunately there were no treats (crackers) for us to buy, but the deer were eating grass and leaves so we fed them more grass and leaves.  It seemed like we were the only ones feeding the deer and getting bows, so maybe we shouldn't have done it, but it seemed like they liked leaf and grass treats. We got a lot of videos. There are some temples/buildings/museums to visit in Nara, but we just did deer and left.

Baby

I was really tired and we wanted to make sure our luggage really arrived at the new hotel.  The trackers we put in (Apple air tags) require Bluetooth Apple networks to work and didn't seem to be working well. We traveled from Kyoto station to Otsu which is on the banks of the largest lake in Japan - Lake Biwa. Luckily the Takkyubin service was flawless and our bags were there waiting for us.

The hotel is beautiful and has several restaurants. We were surprised to not see many Westerners there (one?) - the location is great - only three stops on the train from Kyoto to ZeZe station.  And the view from the 38-floor restaurants and even our 19th floor room was amazing. It was a four-bed room and we had free breakfast (well, paid in advance) each morning - both Japanese and Western options.