Nara Park

Kon'nichiwa! Did you know that Nara, the capital city of Nara prefecture in the Kansai region, used to be the capital of Japan? That's right! Before Kyoto became the capital, and then finally, Tokyo, Nara used to be the capital of the nation. And because of that, the city remains full of historic treasures, including some of Japan's oldest and largest temples.

We wanted to visit Nara because of the famous deer, which, I believe is one of the main reasons people visit the city, aside from the temples and other historical places, of course. We went to Nara from Osaka by Kintetsu rail, and the journey time took around 45 minutes or so. Kintetsu rail is the nearest railway company to Nara Park.

Considered the messengers of the 'gods', the deer in Nara have become a symbol of the city and have even been designated as a national treasure. So when you search Nara, the first thing that comes up are the deer, and of course, we were also curious to see them, so off we went.

We arrived in Nara early morning, around 8 am, so we were practically the first ones at the park. They say that the deer are very gentle, and are very 'polite', because they bow back to you when you bow to them.

                  

The deer are fed a special type of crackers, and these crackers are for sale around the park for Y150. The deer are considered typically tame, but they can get aggressive when you tease them or do not give them food immediately. We saw a tourist shriek so loud when a deer tried to eat her belt.

As for us, my friend bought some crackers first, and she was able to feed the deer, although not leisurely as they wanted to keep eating, so she just quickly fed one instead of distributing the crackers to a few deer.

I also wanted to try feeding them so I also bought some crackers. I haven't even opened the package when they started following us. We tried to walk away, but the deer kept following us around, even biting off the plastic bag where we had some food. So in the end I just gave the whole pack without opening it for fear of getting headbutted by the deer.

Quite a lot of other people then started arriving and the deer became so much more active in following people around. I think they are so used to getting crackers from tourists so they expect everyone to give them some. I did see a deer 'bow' to someone though.

They were so disinterested in us when we had no food, they just lazed on the ground, but when they saw that we had the crackers, they started following us around like crazy. The funny thing is they recognize the vendor, because they don't get the pile of crackers on full display on the side of the park!

Here I am trying to tell the dear that I don't have crackers on me. If you notice, they don't have horns on them. Their horns are sawed off, or whatever method is used to not have them grow long to prevent causing injuries to tourists in case they headbutt people.

After a while, we walked around the neighborhood to see what else is there. We saw there was a museum but we did not go in. One thing is for sure, there were deer everywhere!

After walking for quite a while, we came to Todaiji temple. Todaiji means the "Great Eastern Temple", and is one of Japan's most famous and historically significant temples. It is also a landmark of Nara.

The temple was constructed in the year 752 as the head temple of all provincial Buddhist temples of Japan. The influence of the temple became so powerful that the government had to move the capital to Nagaoka, and then later on to Kyoto.

We did not go inside the temple, we just took some pictures outside, and by then it was already getting crowded as tourists were arriving by buses so we gout out of there quickly.

                 

This is just one doorway we passed by while walking around, and I just wanted to take a picture of it to  show Japanese architecture. Blah.

                   

The cherry tree almost looks like a fake one, isn't it?

There were also smaller shrines that we passed by but we did not go into any of them.

                

Even by the temple there were a lot of deer roaming around. Some were well behaved, some were pretty aggressive and we could hear people screaming because they were startled or scared.

This is the Nandaimon Gate of the Todaiji Temple. It has been designated as a national treasure, along with the statues on the side.

There are also a lot of deer roaming around the gate of Todaiji, begging for senbei, the special crackers made for the deer.

                              

Headbutting deer.                              

And what is Japan without its vending machines? Every few hundred meters, you see a vending machine. And they have one for even the most unthinkable products!

From the park, we walked all the way to JR Nara Station, as we had to go to Fushimi Inari Shrine after Nara. We passed along very clean neighborhoods and I took some pictures.

The JR station is about a kilometer away from the Kintetsu Rail station, so if you are going back to Osaka right after, you can just take the Kintetsu Rail back, but if you want to go to Kyoto, then you might want to take the JR train.

The walk was around 15-20 minutes, but it was leisurely, plus, it wasn't hot, so walking was not hard. It gave us a chance to see more of the community that way.

We even passed a Japanese cemetery and of course, I had to take a picture of it, ha ha!

After the walk, we finally came to JR Nara station, which is this building in this picture.

There was a flea market happening by the station, but since we were still going to other places, we did not buy anything as we did not want to be carrying too many things while we were walking around.

We took some pictures of the items on offer though. 

All in all, it was quite a fun experience interacting with the deer, and it was fun walking around in the neighborhood as well.

Stay tuned for more adventures and you can also read more travel articles in this page.