| Nara, or at least the
central tourist area, is really rather perfect, both in content and scale of
accessibility; you really can walk quite comfortably around Nara Park and up
into the hills if you feel a trifle more energetic. Immaculately manicured and so much a picture
that it is, unsurprisingly, inundated with Japanese amateur artists, all trying to capture
that picture perfect instant. Painters with their easels and
photographers with their stuff, all waiting for the light to be...perfect. Meanwhile, back on planet
earth, the real Japanese are enjoying "flower viewing",
exploring the sensuality of the spring cherry blossom, whilst, perhaps
most importantly, getting utterly pissed. Of course it has its major tourist
attractions, in this case the largest timber building in the world...I guess it just depends how many caveats. Anyway,
regardless of superlatives, a fantastic building, made all the more
surreal by the ladies kneeling in rows on the immaculate lawns, all
clipping the grass perfectly with their perfect scissors.
And then the
gardens! It is almost as if they set it all up for tourists, but the
quite unbelievably perfect gardens are being visited by equally perfect,
inscrutable, kimono clad ladies taking tea in the small pavilions. |
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