To me the big difference between Nara and Kyoto was that Nara was more of what I expected it to be. And I thought that Nara was this small little town that is only known for its deer. But I was wrong, Nara is actually a pretty nice size, maybe like Akron. It’s a very touristy city too, everywhere you go you can see deer merchandise, signs, or cartoons. With Kyoto, I thought that it was going to be a really old city where the buildings aren’t really that modern. But Kyoto is a busy bustling city. And they are very modern, with so many shops.
One thing that I found interesting was, of course, the deer. It was so odd to see the deer just roaming around, being very friendly and calm with people. It was like a fairy tale to me. What I can tell so far is that Japanese culture is very in tune to nature, so I was thinking maybe that’s a reason why they let the deer roam around. I just wonder, how did this all start? It must have took awhile for the deer to get used to people. And do deer have any cultural significance?
A key concept that I found interesting in Japan is that the Japanese take bits of different cultures or ideologies and then make them their own.
For example, in Kyoto there was a Buddhist shrine within a Shinto shrine/temple. This really proves the point that many Japanese don’t follow just one religion. Which makes sense — both reglions have greatly influnced Japanese culture — it would be hard to just choose one. And I think that this helps people have more of an open mind when it comes to learning about different ideas.