Nice murals in the train station:

In the morning, I went to Shitenoji to see an old temple with a pagoda you could actually climb to the the top of (pretty much not possible for most of them):

I then went back to Osaka station to pick up our luggage and take a train to Nara:

train driving is serious business :)

We took the loop line to arrive in Nara by the south so that we could stop at Horyu-ji, the oldest Japanese temple located in Nara. We got super lucky and got a retired engineer who spoke well English and gave us a detailled personalized tour for free:

Overrun by kids again :)

After the temple, we went to Nara proper, but got there a bit late to see anything, so after plyaing with the deer, we backtracked to our fancy Ryokan to enjoy the onsen and a yummy dinner

Except for trying to see a bit of Nara after arriving there instead of just calling it day when we arrived a bit late, we did well :) We just spent more time to finish up Nara the next day