I Saw the Deer on Christmas Day

I saw the deer on Christmas day, 

One bit me while I was on my way, 

I fed it a snack

but it only bit me back

and that's the story of the Christmas deer attack.

 Christmas day we went to Nara to visit the deer and the giant budda. They have a park that has 'tame' deer. 

 Here is a man and a child being accosted by the deer for having something delicious for them to eat. 

 Fun right? Notice the one on the left headbutting the man.

 A temple with a 5 story pagoda

 Go go pagoda!

 Entryway to a room with a bunch of statues.

 This is one of two super sneaky pictures I took despite the signs clearly telling me not to. I rebel on Christmas. 

A statue with 1,000 arms. The buildings have been long lost, but this is still in the same place. The whole exhibition hall was really interesting. 

Another secret video that I took inside another building. Lots of neat statues. 

 Octagon building

 More mangy deer

 Another shrine

 I went ahead and did a prayer and rubbed the budda. The story is that if you rub the budda and then rub the corresponding part of your body, it will be healed. I think it is going to backfire because I was hoping to get rid of my budda belly. 

 Ring the bell!

 I look like a cat burglar,

 The budda is inside, and you can rub the budda through the specially patented buddah holes!

 I laughed a lot at this. One of the funniest things things ever to happen to me with wild animals. 

 I passed them off to Brad

Oh deer...

A big walk down toward the big budda. The deer are even more bold in this part of the park. 

 It looks like a painting, but this is one of two statues that guard the entrance.

 The other statue.

 Entrance into the big budda building.

 Guess what is in there?!

 BUDDA

 Lighting incense

 An awesome sculpted lantern out in the middle of the walkway.

 This is a scale of one of the leaves at the base of the big budda.

 You can see the leaf there in the front. This budda was MASSIVE!

 There are smaller (relatively) statues on the left and right.

 The original plans of how the temple looked back in the way back when. 

 Mini light up budda!

 Some replicas of the pieces that used to be in the hall.

 Kids were climbing through the posts in the main hall. Like the redwood tunnel in California.

 This dude knows what is going on.

 I think I should try out for a live budda exhibition sometime. I can sit and look serene.

 The story behind this budda is that it took about 4 years to build, and was really expensive. As a matter of fact, it was so expensive that it ruined the economy and the lower classes revolted and tore some of the buildings down. I found this really hilarious. 

 Leaving the budda building.

 Who is this guy? That's right! Colonel Claus!

 We tried to catch the Imperial grounds being open. A whole giant promenade in the middle of Kyoto.

 It would be really pretty in the springtime.

 Entrance into the grounds. We ended up being a little too late, but oh well. I have a feeling of how it might look.

 In Kyoto, there was a night shrine with a flea market. Naturally we decided to check it out. 

 Banana on a stick.

 We didn't try the cooked octopus balls, but we did eat some more Christmas chicken.

 I don't actually know what they were selling...

 This is the shrine all lit up for the night. 

 People lining up to ring the bell.

 We got some candied fruits. This is a candied mikan (which is like a tangerine).

 Brad got a disappointing candied apple.

Tasty...

 We were waiting to catch a bus, so we killed some time near the Kyoto tower which was lit up. 

We went where all people go to kill time, the mall! We had several hours to kill, and were so tired from walking around that we decided to go see a movie. Final verdict: It was expensive, the movie was terrible, but it was nice to sit down for a while in a warm dark place.