on a grand scale

The city of Nara was the first capital of Japan, for a brief 30 years in the 700's. Now it is a tourist hot spot with 8 Unesco World Heritage sites. We went to visit the Toodai-Ji and Daibutsu-den - the hall of the Great Buddha. This site is located in a large park filled with cute but smelly deer.The deer are quite used to people and spend most of their time begging for food. You can buy deer biscuits for them from vendors, but watch out! If you don't feed them fast enough for their liking, they get violent. In the photo below, the deer at the bottom is about to bite Matt in the leg.
The Daibutsu-den is the world's largest wooden building. Photos just don't do it justice. To stand there in person, looking up at it from any distance is awe inspiring.
The giant Buddha inside is one of the largest bronze statues in the world. It's eyes are a metre wide each. I can easily imagine the wonder it must have filled the people with 2000 years ago.
There were several other scary and wonderful statues inside, as well as a plethora of truly tacky souvenirs.
It was a deep experience for me to be surrounded by so many strange and ancient things on this trip.