Nara

Nara is so beautiful, basically all you have to do is hold the camera upright and press click. You will always get an amazingly gorgeous, complex and layered picture of something lovely and peaceful or multi-dimensional and thought-provoking. That being said, if any of my photos totally suck, blame it on Kodak.

Nara is outside of Osaka, about an hour train ride in some direction. I forget which. It was Japan's first "permanent" capital city (around 700 A.D.) and became a sort of headquarters for Buddhist priests, or at least a gathering place for monasteries and temples. There are still tons of temples left and one very large and beautiful park where one can tour around several different huge-ass Buddhist worshipping places. (I was running out of synonyms for "temple". BTW, I am exHAUSTed right now. Forgive my flippancy. Nara is my favorite place so far in Japan, outside of my apartment.)

This is a very famous shinto shrine. There are several different terraces and stairs you can walk up or down and see different sides to the shrine. It is fully functioning - while we were there for 45 minutes two different wedding parties came through (one finished up with pictures and the next began a new ceremony). Priests come and go performing various priestly tasks.