The much awaited trip to Nara, no wait, Ise
What you may not know from reading danielle account of her attack at the hands of the shika, is that this was our second attempted trip to Nara. Our first attempt at this trip occured almost a week earlier. My old semi supervisor turned japanse teacher, has been wanting to take us to Nara for a while. He credits this place with being the birthplace of his dream to learn english.
However, it is not a place he goes often. Thus, he was not really all that sure as to how to get there…
The journey started out well enough. Danielle and I got up and out early to meet my japanese teacher in Ogaki, his home town. We got off the train, found his car and headed out. First we had to make a quick pit stop at his neices place in order to drop off some crabs he had bought too many of. (He later also gave us some of these same crabs! Yum!) This took us a bit further south of where we normally would have started.
Not to worry. Almost every car in japan has a “Navi” or Personal Navigation Device. The device chirped in “atarashi routo ni henko shimasu” (changing to a new route) and we were on our way. Unfortunately, this route started out by getting a bit strange. There was the turn through a small mountain road that twisted amost directly up the face of the mountain. The road was very very narrow, and with some spectacular shear cliffs. Danielle was less then thilled by this. However, we got over the mountains just fine and eventually made it onto one of the major expressways.
This is where the real toubles started. It seems there was a whole new expressway that had recently been finished, and not included in the map set that was in the navi. The interchange was all different from directions of the navi. We soon found ourselves driving in no mans land. According to the navi we were driving straight though the mountains. It was very confused and believe me, so were we.
We eventually found a rest area, and got some directions. Got turned around and headed back. Long story short, we visted this interchange several times. In the end, my frustrated and overwhelmed teacher, suggested, “How about going to Ise? Ise is nice.”
So this is the backgound of story of our trip to Ise, and Japans most beautiful, and most holy, temple. It’s true. It was amazingly beautiful. Situated in a cedar forest along a river. Most of the buildings, rocks and walls are covered in moss and the place smells fantastic.
All in all a fabulous trip, if not the trip we expected.
