Waiting to get into our room, Lynn and I decided to have a snack in the Nara Hotel lounge.  The room hadn’t been updated in decades; it was dreary and the carpet was stained and worn.

The menu was geared to westerners.  We ordered a very expensive platter of sandwiches which comprised of crustless, doughy white bread smeared with the thinnest layer of cucumbers and tomatoes and cut into triangles.  The mixed nuts were reliably salty and filling and the black tea was served with real cream.

“I can’t see us eating here every night if these prices are indicative of the food joints,” I said. Throughout the hotel, we’d seen a cafe, a restaurant, a bar, this lounge, and other eating and drinking establishments.

“But if you noticed from the taxi on the way in,” Lynn replied, “There’s nothing nearby. We’ll have to figure out where the nearest restaurants are.  If we have to take taxis to get to them, we may as well eat here.”

—

A young woman escorted us to our room.  “Down two levels, in the basement,” she pantomimed as she pulled a trolley with our cases down several long hallways.

“There are windows?” I asked, alarmed.

“Oh yes!” she replied, laughing as she pressed the elevator button.  “It will take time,” she said, and walked away.  As we waited, we tried to decode a sign promoting beers on a rooftop terrace.

“Forty thousand yen?” I said in disbelief.  “That’s about forty bucks … for a beer?  I’m sure the view is very nice, but ….”

Our girl guide returned.  The “modern” wing of the hotel was very 80s style, in teal, grey, and mauve. There were more long hallways. I noticed vending machines selling beer for 2,500 yen—$2.50.

The room was geared to feel familiar to the western visitor, complete with a fake fireplace with plastic logs.

“It’s very spacious,” Lynn commented.

“Yes, and clean.”  A sliding glass door lead out to a cement patio without furniture. “This will be a good place to hang washing.”

—

I had read an article about Nara in Conde Nast Traveler which mentioned the Nara Hotel. You could walk down a set of stone steps (of course!) to the “atmospheric” Naramachi neighborhood of tiny streets and houses.

“It sounded really easy in the article,” I told Lynn as we reached the bottom of the steps.

“Don’t believe it!” she replied.

We did find it, despite ourselves, and I can’t say it was as I’d expected.  It was a typical urban neighborhood with streets, narrow alleys, and houses and shops.  Kind of like west St. Paul.

Why does the same place strike one person as “unforgettably atmospheric” and another as ho hum?

We accidentally found a temple, the Gangoji.  It had a beautiful inner shrine and nice collection of Buddha statues in an air-conditioned building.  No photos were allowed.

The courtyard was strewn with lotuses.  Would they stay in pots all summer?  There wasn’t a body of water nearby that I could see.

“You know how Taro had us use lotus root in our stir fry?” I reminded Lynn.  “I wonder if you can just go out in a kayak and pull them up?  We’ve got millions of ‘em in Minnesota.”

“Oh I should think not,” she replied.  “Wild ones are probably full of parasites.”

Not oishi.  As it turns out, harvesting wild lotuses in Minnesota is not allowed; I don’t know it it’s because of parasites or something else.

The only other photo I took at Gangoji was of a workman setting up a dicey-looking ladder.  I mean really—a three-legged ladder?

We walked back out into Naramachi and I may have startled Lynn when I expressed a great deal of excitement over a little housewares shop.  Inside, it was about the size of my bedroom and packed to the rafters with pots, straw brooms, plastic tub sets, and clothes-drying contraptions, most of it covered in dust.  An ancient woman sat behind a smeared glass counter; she didn’t move and her expression never changed.  Was she dead?  I found an omelet pan for about $5 but the mood for buying one had passed.