Going back to the topic of last year's family trip to Nara...
After staying overnight at a hotel in Nara City, we joined a city walking tour led by a local volunteer guide. There was no fee to participate. I was very interested in his talk about the history and sightseeing spots in the city. What's more, he told us interesting rumors in the city. For example, the characters of wild deer in the city are different according to the living areas. He feels that deer living near Todaiji-temple are more violent-tempered than those in Nara Park. That was unexpected for me, as we saw a deer playing nicely with a little girl in front of Todaiji-temple. Whatever, thank you, I'll never forget this interesting tour.
Getting into the main topic, let me introduce a train I saw at Kintetsu-Nara station on the same day. It's the EMU 8810 series for the Nara, Osaka and other lines. The 8810 series is Kintetsu's first model with a field chopper electric control system. 8 sets, 32 cars in total, were built by Hitachi from 1981 to 1984. The field chopper is one of the advanced rheostatic control systems, but has been replaced by a newly developed VVVF inverter (variable frequency drive) system since the 1990s. Trains with this system have been retired one after another in the Tokyo metropolitan area, but are still active on the Kintetsu lines.
The volunteer-guided walking tour and the historical Kintetsu train... I fully enjoyed Nara City.
