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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
We liked Nara. It is a pretty, peaceful city, with enough to see, but not so much that you exhaust yourself trying to fit it all in. It has deer. It has nice places to drink, as discussed in our earlier post. And it had a great place for my new favourite food of Tonkatsu, the breaded pork cutlet (in the covered shopping arcade next to Kintetsu Station), which we couldn't help but make a return trip to during our stay.
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
But the food and drink aside, possibly my favourite place in Nara was the Kasuga Taisho, or Shrine, and more specifically, the grounds, with all of its hundreds of moss covered stone lanterns.
The shrine itself was originally built in 768, but in accordance with the Shinto rituals, it was torn down and rebuilt every couple of decades to ensure purity. Thankfully, they stopped doing this around the end of the Edo period, so the current shrine dates back to around the mid 1800s.
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
The lanterns continue inside too, only now in bronze. I would love to be here for one of the twice yearly festivals where they light them all up, as I am sure it would look truly stunning.
As I have no particular wish to make a history lesson out of this
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
post - in honesty my interest here was far more the look of the place than its historical or religious significance - I'll just leave you with some photos to look at.
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
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| Kasuga Shrine, Nara |
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