Warning: tons of deer pictures ahead!
On Wednesday, we embarked on our first proper day trip to Nara, the ancient capital of Japan from 710 to 794 AD.
When you mention Nara, most people will automatically think of the hordes of ravenous deer that inhabit Nara Park and they’re totally right. The city has adopted the deer as its mascot and you can find cute illustrations on everything, from posters, to buses and even on the seat covers of the bus we took to Nara park.
Funny deer signs that are scattered throughout the park.
Our first stop was Kasuga-taisha, an ancient Shinto Shrine. An UNESCO World Heritage site, Kasuga-taisha was established in 768 AD.
Kasuga-taisha was incredibly beautiful and serene, filled with what must’ve been thousands of stone lanterns all across the temple — most of them so old that they were almost enveloped in moss.
Since it was spring, or something, Kasuga-taisha opened their doors and we were able to tour the inner sanctums of the temple for a fee, which of course we did.
Unfortunately, pictures were prohibited but the interior was mostly sacred Shinto shrines, and several thousand-year old trees like this one we found at the end of the tour.
The deer that roam around the Shrine (which is located within Nara Park) are regarded as heavenly creatures considered to be messengers of the Gods by the Shinto, which is why they’re often left to their own devices and in some cases, honoured.
Visitors could draw deer on wooden cutouts for a price as an emblem of good fortune, a cute variation of traditional Shinto rituals found in other temples.
On to the deer — they were everywhere! They were extremely tame and didn’t mind the hundreds of tourists interacting with them, although they could get quite aggressive if they picked up the scent of deer crackers on you.
To feed the deer, you could buy a stack of deer crackers for 150 yen from stalls around the park but be warned, you may just start a feeding frenzy once they get the hint that you’re carrying tasty treats.
The bucks mostly have their horns removed, possibly to avoid them skewering tourists for crackers.
It was interesting to observe, they were very zombie-like in that they would just walk around and sniff you for treats.
Some of them would get incredibly aggressive and they would nibble at our pockets (one even licked Anne’s nice coat) and we even saw them eating a poor tourist’s bus ticket and map. Keep away any paper from them, they quite like eating maps for some strange reason.
When hanging out with the deer, we quickly learned a few things. To make them stop harassing and chasing you for food once you gave them a taste of crackers, simply show them both your palms and shake them about — that seemed to work in convincing them that we didn’t have any food left and was universally understood by all the deers!
Here’s a funny photo that Anne took of a deer, having her way with me and trying to bite off parts of my backpack.
Another interesting thing we noticed that some of the deer were quite smart, and would bow to you or bow when you bowed to them. That was one of the most surprising and endearing discoveries we made at the park — it somehow made them seem very human and Japanese.
Deers that bowed to us were usually rewarded with treats. Clever little map munchers, those were.
We met this slightly older deer on the way to the Todaiji Temple, who seemed very placid and was more than happy to pose with us for pictures.
He was a great sport and earned himself many many deer crackers!
The last thing on our to-see list was the Todai-ji, a massive temple complex that houses the world’s largest bronze statue of the Buddha Vairocana.
Housed in an immensely huge wooden structure, it was an incredible sight to behold.
I could see why they needed such a huge structure, the bronze statue of Buddha inside was crazy huge and extremely imposing. You felt so small beside it.
The temple also housed smaller statues and other relics, which was quite interesting to me since I was raised as a Buddhist, so a lot of the themes and statues were quite familiar to me.
On the outside, there was this extremely sinister looking statue of Binzuru, one of Buddha’s disciples who is said had mastered occult and psychic powers.
He had a gift of healing and tradition was to touch a body part of him, which would then heal a corresponding part of your body and dozens of people were clamouring to feel him up. I kinda loved how creepy-looking the wooden statue of him was — reading that he had occult powers didn’t seem that much of a surprise.
And that’s it for our touristy adventures in Nara! Our day in Nara didn’t quite end yet — we had dinner at Wa Yamamura, a 3 Michelin star kaiseki restaurants located in Nara. Like our post on Hyotei, we will write about our experience there in a separate post!
Thanks for reading!