On April 4th, at the tail end of our trip, we went to Nara. It was cold and rainy and the rain didn’t let up until we had seen as much as we wanted to and were walking down the hill back to the train station to go back to Kyoto.

Even so, there was a lot to see. I took this photo beside the park in front of Todaiji temple. Todaiji is a huge temple which is famous as much for being the world’s largest wooden building as for the giant bronze statue of Buddha it houses. The Buddha, called Daibutsu in Japanese, is 16.2m (53.1ft) tall. They have a post with a hole in it at ground level that’s the size of the Buddha’s nostril. It’s said that if you can fit through the hole, you’ll have good fortune for the rest of your life. Unless you’re foolish enough to test the Buddha’s patience by trying to go through more than once.