Two Days In Nara: Day Two or Squeezing Through The Nose of the Great Buddha

Sigh, another day of gray clouds and cold. It looks like these weather conditions are going to continue throughout the entire month. The sun broke through momentarily allowing for a few nice photos but another photographic day was a complete wash. Instead of walking around the outside attractions of Nara I opted to pony up my Y500 and return to Todaiji temple to this time head on inside to pay a visit to the great Buddha and make an attempt to squeeze myself into his nose.

As you walk up the path towards Todaiji you find some of the best souvenir shops in Nara. These are gold mines of uniquely Japanese merchandise from the resplendent to the extremely frumpish. Yesterday I mentioned a few closer to the station but the ones leading to the temple are vastly superior for not only lower prices (and it seems the closer you get to the temple the more the merchants compete with each other to lower prices. Each new shop you come across has things for a buck cheaper then the one you just passed) but also the amount of merchandise you can find within. All the usually tacky tourist stuff is in here. You have the deer bobble heads and tacky T-shirts but you also have swords here, beautiful dolls and grandiose colorful masks. Japanese confectionary can be found here as well with painted deer faces etched into cookies and candies to give the food a more Nara’ish feel. Expensive replicas of the shrines and temples sit behind glass cases nut if you are hard up yen you can snag either the plastic or bronze variety for cheaper. The wooden ones will put a dent in your wallet. Signs in English tell you to please not touch the merchandise, especially the swords. I can just picture some crazy tourist brandishing one of the swords in the shop and swinging it around like a mad person. Other signs tell you that the shop gladly accepts Visa or Mastercard. These shops are the first places I have been that accepts foreign cards. The tourist trade has got to be big business. I wonder how many boxes of those deer bobble heads they have in the back?

While trying to take a photo of some of the more frightening masks a wrinkled old shop keep stalked up to me and rudely told me “no” flashing me the arm X sign. Was I a child? My plan was to take a few shots inside the shop to remind myself what I wanted to purchase and to also show you folks back home some things I thought you might like as souvenirs. I was expecting the next words out of his mouth would be a curt “Mogwai not for sale!” Needless to say this shop will not be taking in any of my hard earned Yen and I made sure to inform the imprudent shopkeeper by saying “Okay…no picture, no yen.” This shop was the priciest of the lot anyway. The other places were far more welcoming, all smiles and bows. I decided to not take shots inside though and to save gifts as more of a surprise. Anyway, as I was saying, lots of nice stuff here amongst the silly Hello Kitty geishas and plastic ninja stars. Here is where I found the dragon kimono I liked. If you hunt around you can find some pretty strange things in these shop.


For example, take the No Fucking shirt I found hung up over exquisite Japanese dolls and paper fans. How this relates to Japan I don’t know. Why is it here in a souvenir shop with swords and dolls and masks and deer crackers? Is there some bylaw I am not privy to?



Yesterday I mentioned Nandai-mon, the enormous wooden gate you cross under to get to the temple. On your way up you walk by a stone prayer statue with some stone steps carved into the path. I didn’t find out where they went today.


The gate itself is painted blazing red and has two nice lanterns flanking the entrance. Some have commented on the emptiness of my photographs as for a country so densely populated one would think I’d have people in my shrine and temple shots. Well, I am pretty good at framing them out when they are around but for the most part I have visited sites on days where they are ghost towns.


No such luck with Todaiji Temple as foreigners and Japanese alike were clustered all around the site forcing me to dig deep into my powers of people cropping. I would have to be a contortionist to find a way to remove the crowds and only managed one or two shots without them. There was also the deer to try to work around. You get to the gate by walking up that long stone path of shops and vendors.


Those wooden guard statues are just inside the gate and unfortunately photographs of them have to include the safety mesh cage.




At the gate a deer stood as though on guard perfectly framed by one of the entranceways. I just gazed into you as though saying “None shall pass”, motionless.




The man attraction of the temple complex is Daibutsu-den Hall, the largest wooden building in the world. The complex was founded in 752 by Emperor Shomu as a place to enshrine the Vairocana Buddah and in the Nara period it was the General Head-temple (kokubunji) of all provincial temples in Japan. Fire destroyed the hall twice and the last time Daibutsu-den was reconstructed was in the Edo period (1692 to be exact). Gazing upon the gigantic wooden structure it is hard to imagine that the reconstruction is two thirds the size of the original 752 complex.




Before entering the hall you meet a haunting statue of wood and red called the Binzuru which was carved by Pindola Bharadvaja in the 18th century. Pindola is said to reside with 1,000 of his disciples in Aparagodani, to the west; the second, Kanakavatsa, with 500 disciples, in Kashmir in the north; the tenth, Panthaka, with 1,300 disciples, in the Heaven of the 33 Gods. It appears that Pindola, the only one with Mahakasyapa who did not enter Nirvana, became the Arhats par excellence after the disappearance of Mahakasyapa, and that the others are merely replicas. The text on the statues explanation sign reads: Pindola was one of the sixteen arahats, who were disciples of the buddha. Pindola is said to have excelled in the mastery of occult powers. It is commonly believed in Japan that when a person rubs a part of the image of Binzuru and then rubs the corresponding part of his own body, his ailment will disapear. People rubbed away at whatever the could reach and then rubbed themselves in hopes that the “common belief” was factual. I could not reach the statues throat and the desire to remove my throat inflammation would have to go unrequited. Instead I rubbed a knee and then rubbed my knee and my leg was still sore. How many times in my life am I going to be fooled by haunting wooden stages in red promising removals of ailments?




Inside Nara’s main attraction sat the star of the show silent and still overseeing all. The daibutsu itself, or Great Buddha, is a towering bronze statue that ranks as one of the world’s largest. It was first cast in 1709 but over the centuries has fallen to fires and earthquakes. The current beast of a statue was recast in the Edo period and is 16 meters high with a the bronze portions weighing in at 437 tones and an additional 130kg of gold makes this one heavy Buddha. This is an image of the Vairocana Buddha which is the embodiment of Dharmakaya (the central concept in Mahayana Buddhism). The Vairocana is the center of the Five Wisdom Buddhas and is believed to be the overseer of all the worlds and their own Buddhas. Some believe the Buddha was built to ward off the murderous smallpox virus that had been raving Japan during the time period. The statue truly is an awe inspiring neck craning gaze skyward from the doorway of the hall. Faithful stood and prayed to the image while us Western folk just went snap happy with our cameras hoping for some kind of image in such low light.


The steps to the statue were all lined with the slippers of the monks who maintain the cleanliness of this sacred site.






The hall is quite gloomy inside with the smoke of the incense lingering around the candles. Dim shadows are cast on the floors and walls by the candle flames. The Great Buddha is not all there is to see, although well worth the price of admission. Inside there are other statues of spectacular design including a golden Buddha, replicas of the original size parts of the Daibutsu and wooden models of what the original complex looked like. A counter near the exit sold photographs and prayer markers (some which were tied to the railing outside).


And then there was the hole. I missed it at first even though I was looking as the hole is quite small. When you near the end of the walk around the Buddha you find one of the wooden pillars holding the hall up and at the base a hole has been carved. The hole is roughly the size of the Great Buddha’s nostril and it is said that those who can fit through it will be granted enlightenment. A group of kids were easily slipping in and out obtaining triple helpings of enlightenment and making the task look like child’s play. Indeed, if you are the size of a child, it is just that. Watching adult wiggle and scrunch and push to try to get through was all good fun to us onlookers. I wonder how many times people have become stuck? At the hole I met a trio of travelers from France and I got to use my lackluster knowledge of the French language but they were happy to be able to talk to somebody else in their native tongue. They urged me to make a go at the hole. I was reluctant until a group of finely dressed Japanese men stripped off their tuxedo coats and each took turns successfully passing through the nostril. One of them saw me laughing at the heavier of their group members huffing and puffing his way through the hole. They issued me a challenge and down the gauntlet came. Did I accept their challenge ushered over giggles of disbelief? Oh, my friends, yes I did. Off came my jacket. Down went my pack and camera. Down went my sweater. I asked the crowd if they had any butter? The French people offered to take a photo of my attempt. I sucked it all in and got down on all fours before the hole. How do I get myself into these situations? And did I make it through the hole to obtain enlightenment of my own?


You’re damn right I did! I thought the best strategy was to go in arms first and use my hands to grab the bottom of the hole and just yank myself through. It worked and I made it through without any struggle in a matter of seconds. Sure, I scrapped my elbow a little bit but now I had enlightenment. I didn’t feel any smarter but time will tell, folks. Going through that whole could very well transform me into Einstein!

On the way out I met another Frenchman, this time from Montreal, who invited me with him to visit some of the ancient burial mounds on the edge of the city. He had just met a Japanese girl and said it should be a great time if the weather holds. I declined his polite offer as I was pretty tired and the did not want to be caught out in the rain. It was time to head back to the apartment and end my two day trip to Nara (although I would be back here teaching for the rest of the week). On the train what I thought was a Japanese girl walked up to me. I had my headphones on and had to remove them to hear what she was asking. She was speaking very good English and inquired about the direction of the train. Turns out she wasn’t Japanese at all but a girl from Malaysia here on a business trip. We exchanged pleasantries and informative tidbits about each other’s countries and journeys and she asked me to join her for diner with a friend in Kyoto. With the hour being late and a trip to Kyoto another hour away and with me coughing and sniffling I had to also decline this offer in exchange for the bliss of sleep. Somewhere in an alternate reality another me took a different route and who knows where it lead but such things remained a mystery as I watched the pretty Malaysian girl wave at me through the window and disappear down the tracks.