Figjam's Epic Adventure 'The Second Coming': Exploring Nara Pt.1

23/9/12

1543 (localtime)

Osaka/Kyoto/Nara

Written on a train from Hiroshima to Osaka, feeling very ill after Karaoke.

Howdy all, I’ve been in Hiroshima for the past 3 days absolutely loving it, but right now I don’t feel all that well… We had a bit of a party last night and we ended up gong to a Japanese style Karaoke place where you pay 1500Yen ($18.50AUD) and you get all your can drink for 2 hours including your Karaoke session!

So obviously if you ever come across the ‘all-you-can-drink’ rule you always try to make the most of it, and last night not just myself but I think everyone pushed it to the limits, so as I sit on this train that is rattling down the tracks I’m feeling not all that great! But never mind let us continue!

Ok, so I arrived to Osaka from Tokyo via a very boring, long and uncomfortable bus ride but either way I arrived at 7.30am on the 16^th of September feeling pretty groggy from not much sleep on the bus. Unfortunately the bus driver dropped me off at the wrong place but I managed to find my way back to the city with little dramas.

I pretty much had 4 hours to kill until it was 12pm so I could meet my new American Couch Surfer called Jack!

So I wandered into the local Arcade and wandered around for a while. Whilst I was there I met a couple of Australian guys who were in Japan for a couple of weeks to see a gaming festival that was happen in a few days. So I hung out with these Aussie guys for the majority of the time, just having a bit of fun on the games.

11am arrived quite quickly and I saw myself on the train heading to Jack’s place where he met me.

I dumped my bags and Myself, Jack and his other Dutch couch surfer headed off into the city as I had planned to meet up with some of the guys that I travelled with in Syria back in 2009!

We made it too the station where I met up with Jon and his friend Emily, these guys were great they showed me around the city of Osaka and even treated me to a couple of beers and some great Japanese food.

That night we planned to meet up for a drink with a French guy who I also travelled with in Syria (2009), it was so great just to reminisce about all the fun times we had!

The night ended at a reasonable hour, but we had missed all the busses and trains back to Jack’s house so we just crashed at some random French girls house who then treated us to breakfast in the morning! Perfect!

As you can imagine it was a slow start to the morning, but I was going to convince the Jack and the Dutch girl that we should go to Nara to try and see some temples and check out the 1,200 deer that roam the parks in Nara.

By the time we made it to Nara it was 4.30pm and the temples close at 5, so we were unable to go inside, it didn’t phase me to much as I was planning on staying the night in Nara so I could explore Nara Dreamland which is an abandoned amusement park! But ill get to that a bit later.

It was great fun walking around, but it started to get late so we grabbed some local cheap food and I said goodbye to the guys who were heading back to Osaka!