Day 16 – Saturday, 13 April 2024
The first of two days of driving. Silly days, really. Four and a half hours doesn’t seem like much when it’s just a blue line on Google Maps. It’s a lot on the actual road. For those of us in the front seat, with driving and/or navigating to do, and the best views, it’s acceptable. It’s too much for Seb, whose grumpiness shows by the end of the day.
From the Shiozuka Highlands towards Nara, just skirting Tokushima, breakfast in lovely Sakurazutsumi Park in Aizumi. Over Awaji Island, including the impressive bridge at the north end (Kafka on the Shore mention, tick). Pause for lunch at the Village of Happiness, Shiawase no Mura, Kobe. Hundreds of families with kids much younger than ours played in the park, we strolled through the Japanese Garden (signposted thus). Then on to Nara and its famous deer.
Nara is cool. It’s a small city, just 45 minutes away from Osaka on the train, and I bet some people live here and commute. In its little laneways and arcades one can find shops of all persuasions and pretensions (I loved the striped, seersucker double breasted jacket I saw in one shop window, I just didn’t love it 90,000 yen’s worth.) It has one Big Tourist Thing – the aforementioned deer in a green block housing a couple of magnificent temples, one with a truly awe inspiring 800 year old gate. The deer make the whole zone smell like deer and, like all of Japan’s Big Tourist Things in springtime, it’s overflowing with big tourists, but it’s still magical. It’s also the only place I’ve ever seen soup stock sold in vending machines.
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