The next leg, museums and gardens

We set out the next day, our hearts full of adventure and wonder. We started out into Nara park and Ritsy leaped at the opportunity to teach the deer the difference between a book and a piece of sembe.
The first destination was the Nara museum which had a number of interesting buddha sculptures and some ancient tea kettles and the sort that spoke of an incredible attention to a love of art and of the buddhist gods. Some of the old artifacts were quite reminiscent of the North American Native's art that hints of ancestral links...? We were unable to take pictures in the museum and it was too bad as there was a special ceremony that day that is held only twice a year. The local monks come into the museum to pray for all the statues in the museum, they chanted a long and hypnotic sutra while some of the monks walked around the main floor.
Upon departing the museum, we stumbled across a small temple that I never knew the name of. Though not of the spectacular variety, it was still quite beautiful with the sakura trees in bloom.
As my aunt has a great love of gardening and was teaching us a lot about the flowers and trees, we decided to go to a couple of Japanese gardens that were right next to each other, Yoshikien and Isuien gardens. The above pictured flower was quite beautiful but I forgot the name, so for now I will call it a Toddus Spectacularis flower. Both gardens showed a great attention to care and detail and were both beautiful and relaxing. As I have a horrible memory for flower names, I did not take many pictures and could not identify the flowers that I did. I will point out how restful the gardens were....
... This garden had a room for resting and a place for resting.
And finally in Isuien garden there was a moment of foreshadowing as we had a glimpse of our next destination... Todaiji.