July 18 - Trouble with the money

I'll never buy traveller cheques again... "They take them everywhere. They are really useful"... Sure...

Today, we made our way to Nara early in the morning. Even though we had enough money for now, we needed some for Sapporo, so, in Nara, we went looking for some place we could exchange a few traveller cheques at. We couldn't find any bank that was open, so we decided to go look for post offices. The first one we went to, which was on our way to the park at Nara, one of our destinations, was closed. No wonder, it's saturday and it was a really small post office. We really needed the money, so we walked up to Nara central post office, which was located a kilometer and a half from where we were. This one was actually open, the only thing you could do today was send mail and buy stamps. Great, now what? Hmm, let's try in a hotel. We asked at the post office for the next big hotel in the area, and walked all the way there. We asked if they exchanged TCs, and they said 'yes'. Finally, we had found a place where we could exchange our cheques. The woman at the counter started writing the date on every cheque, and I signed them. Ok, almost finished. But then she took out an "money exchange" form in which I had to put in my name, nationality, etc. And then I saw a field with the title "Room Number". Room number? I'm not staying at the hotel... Hmm. When I told the woman, she explained to me that they only exchange money for guests. Why the hell didn't she say so earlier!? So, we left the hotel wit a bunch of signed traveller cheques and no cash.
Pia was already at the edge of a nervous breakdown, and our trip to Nara looked pretty much ruined. We started walking through the streets thinking about what to do, when we found a tourist information office. We asked, and, even though they were not sure at all, they told us to try at another hotel nearby. We had no better option, so we went. We asked if they exchanged traveller cheques. They did. We asked twice if they did for everyone, not only guests. Positive again. The problem came when we took out the signed cheques. On the cheque it says something like "countersign in presence of person cashing". I hate it when people on the other side of the counter say "wait a second, please" sounding worried and take the phone... After a long phone call, the woman came to us again and told me to simply sign the cheques again on the free space near my earlier signature. Finally, we got our money. The rate was set really low (the current real rate is 93.7 Yen per US Dollar, we got 89.6...), but hey, we got the money, and we got rid of the signed traveller cheques. That was good enough for today.

Relieved, we went to the Nara Park. The first thing that caught our attention were the deer, walking amoung the crowd of tourists, looking for food. Somewhere near where I live in spain, there is a small forest with deer, but they are rather afraid of the people and run away as soon as they feel threatened. This was something new to me... The deer even ran after anyone who had food and tried to get it. Tourist who had some snack with them had a really hard time fleeing from them :D. There were even some tourists trying to train the deer. One guy was trying to make the deer kiss him by putting some cookies halfway in his mouth...

Later on, we went to see the Todaiji Temple, specifically the Daibutsuden, the world's largest wooden building, which also contains the world's largest Buddha statue. Walking in there is really impressive, since, as you approach the building, you start feeling really small. They only drawback was the huge amount of tourists we found there. The summer vacation has just started here in Japan, so it was really crowded with japanese tourists.

After that, we walked back to the station, and took the next train back to Osaka. We could have stayed longer, since there is really a lot to see in Nara, but you have to pay fees for everything, and we already had sore feet. Furthermore, we hadn't slept much last night, and we won't be able to sleep much tonight either, since we have to wake up at 4 am to catch our train. If we miss it, we won't make it to Sapporo in time, since there are only three trains a day in Hokkaido, and the next one arrives way after our hostel's curfew... In case I didn't mention it, tomorrow's trip will be around 14 hours long, which means that it'll take all day to get there.

We've already bought tomorrow's breakfast and lunch. Like always, I bought the cheapest I could get that looked like it would taste good after a few hours in the heat: onigiri. I haven't had too much rice lately, and this one is actually mixed with something else, so... I even bought them in several different flavours, just to make sure that I would at least be able to eat some of them.

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On our way to Nara Park
The deer, waiting for someone to come and give them food... It felt a bit... unnatural.
The Daibutsuden. You can get an idea of it's size by comparing it to the tourists below. Even though I couldn't take a picture that conveyed that feeling, it gets even more impressive the closer you get.
The Daibutsu (Great Buddha). The objective on my camera just isn't suited for close range photos. And I couldn't get any better lighting... Sorry

Walking through Nara Park on our way back to Osaka.