Nara National Museum: Shosoin exhibition and deers

I take a Japanese Visual Culture class that I find really interesting. This one time, we learned about the Todai-ji (東大寺) in Nara, which is one of the most popular places to visit in Japan. It is famous for being one of the Seven Great Temples in Nara, for being a UNESCO world heritage site and for holding the world's largest bronze Buddha statue.

I've always wanted to go see it because it looks like a really impressive place but as of yet, I haven't been.

We learned in class that the complex also has a building called the Shosoin (正倉院), which is essentially a storage house for an bunch of ancient treasures. When the construction of the Todai-ji and its large Buddha was completed (early 8th century), an 'eye-opening ceremony' was held in celebration. For this ritual, people from all over the Buddhist world came to the Todai-ji to see the almost fifteen meter high Buddha that had taken such an incredible amount of time, money and effort to make.These people brought presents, which were from then on stored in the Shosoin. Beside these gifts, the Shosoin also holds a lot of treasures related to the rulers of that time; Emperor Shoktoku and his wife.

The treasures of the Shosoin are very special and are almost never on display for the public, except for once a year in the autumn, when the Nara National Museum exhibits a select few objects from within the big storage house. The amazing thing about this is that, the Shosoin holds around 9000 items and in the exhibition, they only ever show a select few. On top of that, they've only been doing this yearly exhibition for around twenty years I believe, so the items they show this year will most likely not be shown again for a very, very long time and a lot of them this year were on display for the first time ever!

This is why I was so incredibly excited to go see the Shosoin exhibition. 





I really wish I had pictures to show, but as this exhibition is incredibly special, there was no photography (or even sketching) allowed. They did have a set of postcards with pictures of some of the objects, which, of course, I bought. ^^'' I was really impressed by how well all these items had been preserved. My teacher told me that the Shosoin was constructed with a special system so that in both winter and summer, the temperature inside the building would stay more or less the same. (It's got to do with long tree trunks, of which the walls are made, being able to grow and shrink, and slide in and out of each other as the temperature changes)

As my teacher had warned me, there was a lot of people and, as my teacher had warned me, I had to fight heaps of tiny, agressive obaachans (お婆ちゃん, grandmas) in order to get a good look at all the items. But it was worth it. I'm so happy I went!!

Also, Nara is known for having deer roaming around freely, so that was really cute to see.

Nara was really beautiful. It's only about an hour away so I'd like to go back soon.

これで、終わりするわ！I have loads more things to talk about, but this is it for now. It is 2:30AM. I need sleep desu yo~!! ^^

Good night! ♥♥♥