Last month, I visited Nara with my family. We started the day by having lunch at our favorite restaurant. Our daughter and our son-in-law enjoyed drinking Chinese beer, which has become quite popular in Japan since the last year Expo.

After lunch, we visited Toshodaiji Temple, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998. It was built in 759 and is closely associated with the influential Chinese monk Jianzhen, who helped spread Buddhism in Japan. Back then, traveling between China and Japan was a life-threatening journey. I previously wrote about the Japanese envoy ships to China, so if you're curious, please read about it here. Jianzhen missed several times coming to Japan, so when he arrived, he was already 66 years old. He probably wouldn't expect returning to China because of his age. He spent the rest of his life in Japan and passed away at Toshodaiji Temple at the age of 76.

Japanese Buddhism was born in Nara, so there are more temples than in Kyoto. Compared with the temples in Kyoto, temples in Nara look much more simple, and most buildings are much larger.

Locus flowers are closely associated with Buddhism, so you often see them at temples. The temple wasn't crowded even though we saw several foreign tourists, so we enjoyed walking around the temple grounds. Nobody talked, and we had a peaceful time together.

The last picture shows Jianzhen's tomb.

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