June 17th - Thursday

There is a charming town called Nara just a short train ride from Kyoto and we plan to send the day there, so it is up and out first thing in the morning. The information window in the Nara train station tells us that there is an English-speaking volunteer guide at the information office and she is waiting for us! Once outside we can see the old station with its roof that looks like a temple! It is only a short walk to the information office, but not so short that we miss the Quilt Studio Be You sign and make a mental note to check it out later!

Our lovely guide is a young woman named Ayaka, who says we can call her Aya (Eye-ah). She is studying languages and is fluent in Italian after living there for a year, and her English is pretty good. She is very conscientious and whenever we ask a question for which she doesn't have an answer she writes it down to research for her next tour! The information office has both western and Japanese toilets. There was no one else in there so I didn't feel too much like a voyeur taking this photo!

The entire town seems to be filled with temples and pagodas and shrines. Nara Park is home to several of these and also the world's most tame deer! The brochure says that it will not be up to us to determine how close we get to the deer! Right on! Enough people have fed them that they see us all as food sources!

One of the highlights of the visit in the old part of town where we get to see what the inside of an old merchant's house looks like. They are all long and narrow because the taxes were based on the frontage! Part of the house was the store during the day time. The rest of the house has rooms one behind another, similar to shotgun houses, and in the middle is a lovely garden.