Nara was a simple and extremely amusing stop. As I mentioned in my Kyoto post, I took the train with two new friends from my hostel. Matcha ice cream for breakfast wasn’t enough for our bellies so finding food was the first priority. We spent a couple of hours trying new 7-11 beer flavors with our 7-11 lunches and fed deer in the park. Many of the deer have learned to bow before taking food.
I hadn’t tried saké in Japan, so it was part of our day’s mission to find some. We succeeded, discovering a modern little isakaya hidden in the second floor of a building off of the main street. I learned in Japan that there is so much more to see and experience if you just look up.
Appropriately buzzed, we took on a new first and stepped into a Pachinko arcade and gambled the pachinko slots. If I remember correctly, we actually won a little! But we laughed so much as we struggled to figure it out that that was the real win. It was worth every Japanese equivalent of a penny that we dropped. Tiring quickly if the monotony and slight air of desperation that accompanies any gambling space, we ditched pachinko and visited a “normal” arcade. But this place was SO beyond normal! It was an arcade from the gaming Gods. They had everything…so many games that the levels were organized by category (i.e. claw prize machines, racing games, shooting games, music games, etc). Riding the escalator up we emerged to see a floor pad similar to Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) and gave it a shot. We were more hooked on this than the pachinko. Watch the video to see us struggle to figure it out.
Nara sucked us in and suddenly the sun had gone down. So we said goodbye to one of our friends, and the remaining two of us continued the journey to Osaka.
Bridge Over Distance 