Kansai! Nara & Izu

The day before we were supposed to bring the car back, we left behind our Kyoto apartment and headed towards Nara. Traffic took us more time than we thought, but luckily we reached the Nara Park during daylight. We all knew that there was supposed to be deers in Nara Park, but I guess all of us were surprised how many and how fearless they were. Half of the secret were cookies made speacially for deers, which you could buy from a small stalls in the park. The only problem was that if the deers would notice you having a packet you were surrounded immediately. I have dealed with horses since I was young so I didn't find this pony size creatures scary at all. Some of the males tried to poke you with horns if you didn't give the cookie, but just walking fearlessly through the pack would be still enough for you to get your way. But still, how cute those were. <3

The weather was wavering between rain, lightnings and basic sunny day, which made the air so tence and moist that it really didn't courage to walk very much in the forest though. Other challenge were hornets. Hornets are huge, at least size of a thumb, wasp kind of bugs which are much more dangerous than wasps. They were litterally everywhere when you entranced the forest were the temples were. We tried to avoid them as much as possible, but they always found us.

We headed back to the car around 6pm, around the same time when sun was starting to set. We didn't have time to visit at any other sightseeing place than Nara Park which was kind of a pitty, but at least we saw the deers. We had already before the trp decided that the return to Tokyo would be through smaller roads that would not charge money for using them. So when we hit this option to the navigator, it kindly told us that we will arrive to Shizuoka at 3am. It was kind of a pessimistic guess, because acutally we were there already at 2am, so we picked a manga cafe where to get some sleep before last day. This manga cafe wasn't like they usually are (only curtains instead of sliding door, they hit the lights on at 7am, plankets cost money), but we were all too tired to actually care.

Next morning we set our curse towards to Izu penisula. Our big plan was to drive to the head of penisula, spend some time on the beach and then drive all the way to Tokyo to return the car before 19pm. Well, we of course didn't realize (since none of us had been in Izu before) that we were only able to use serpent like mountain roads in order to the get to the tip of Izu. And then you can guess that it took some time. So reality: we had one hour time to be at the beach. So we quickly swam in the sea (my first time in Japan), but I have to say, the waves were much mure higher than I thought they would be. We were in the water about half an hour, but that alone was able to make you tired. Even I have a swimmer backgroud. ^^ So after that we return to the car and returned to Tokyo. Izu is definetly one of those places were I would like to still go back before returning to Finland. And that's how our trip to Kansai area came to the end. Happy and tired.

Nara park

Izu Penisula