Today (1 April) we hit Nara for the Big Buddha and Osaka for the Big Sky Building.
Big Buddha’s house:
Squeezing through this hole (approx the same size as the big Buddah’s nostril) brings life long good luck.
Buying little Buddahs outside the big Buddah’s house (Todai-ji Temple, Nara)
Oh yeah, and apparently the deer at Nara are an attraction – we weren’t interested in finding them, but it turns out they’re hard to avoid.
And while up and around the Todai-ji temple complex I made use of one of our rain umbrellas as a shoot-through for the flash (and Janette as the flash stand) to take a portrait shot of Nicola:
Then a hop skip and jump away on the bullet train we were in Osaka where we decided to check out the Umeda Sky Building.
View from below:
View from the top:
Then we killed a little bit of time inside waiting for the sun to set…
It got dark, but “those sneakers” (yes Kerryn) shone bright:
And the dark made things a little more interesting looking:
(this shot was a challenge – 1/10th of a second handheld in the wind…)
The escalator shafts from the outside:
and inside:
And then outside back on the ground:
Ok, posts are still a few days behind and will get further behind as today we head up into the mountains to stay with some monks. Not expecting to see interwebs up there, but am expecting to see vending machines (’cause they’re everywhere!).