There was a lot of Wabi-Sabi represented in the city of Nara. One of them is the many traditional, rustic styled gardens. The gardens are so beautiful, especially the one we visited. Inside were many traditional Japanese plants, like the Japanese maple. And everything seemed to have a story within the garden. Like the back building —one had to duck into a small door to get inside. The reasoning why this was so was because everyone entering the tea room would be on the same level, no one higher than anyone else. This is still used today in the building.
I absolutely love how nice everyone in japan is, but especially the children! Three times now I have been asked by school children if I would answer questions for their English class. They are just learning, but already they sound so great! It is wonderful how brave they are, going up to random strangers, and it makes me so happy that they seem excited for me to help. It was not the group pictured, but rather for one later on that I answered a question for and they gave me an orange origami crane as a thank you for helping. They are all so nice!
There are so many differences between Kyoto and Nara, one of which being the deer. The deer living in Nara have been living in this area for a very long time and every year they have 300 babies, keeping their population very high. They are accustomed to being around people and are not at all afraid, seeing as they bite people’s butts and take papers as snacks. In Kyoto, there are very few wild animals. In my two days in the city, I have seen a multitude of crows, bats, storks and one cat. Besides that, there don’t seem to be very many wild animals in Kyoto, especially in comparison to the 3,000 deer living in Nara.