Today we got up at a reasonable hour and caught the (normal speed) train to Nara (about 40 mins?). Outside the JR station we caught a loop bus to take us to Nara Park. It’s about a 20-30 minute walk, but we were being lazy and catching the bus was easy.

Nara Park:

Nara Park is famous for its (substantial) population of wild deer that roam around freely. The deer are thought to be messengers of Shinto gods and over the years have been “taught” to politely bow for food from humans.

For 150yen you can buy, from various stalls around the park, a pack of ten deer crackers. I’d post a photo of them but we never had any in our possession long enough to photograph them.

It seems that the smartest deer have worked out that it pays to stand near where most tourists enter the park and buy their crackers. These smart deer then pursue cracker owners aggressively, wait for crackers to be dropped in a panic and thus become the biggest deer also. The bigness helps with the intimidation.

Maeve wasn’t too sure at first:

And they really were pushy – nibbling your clothes, biting onto any areas that look like cracker storage, and generally demanding all of the crackers.

I particularly like this sign – illustrating all the different ways that the deer can f*ck you up:

More feeding photos:

You can’t really tell from any of our photos, unfortunately, but they do bow. Some of the wee ones do more of an impatient, repeated head nod. Some of them sort of lower their heads and twist their necks around. But most respond to the sight of a cracker by lowering their head and neck in a fairly quick, but very cute, bow.

After blowing through four packets of crackers in about as many minutes, we strolled through the park towards Tōdai-ji.

Along the approach to Tōdai-ji is the Nandaimon Gate:

Tōdai-ji (the “Great Eastern Temple”) is one of Japan’s most famous temples. It’s a 1300-year-old Buddhist temple.

The main hall – Daibutsuden – (pictured immediately above and below) is the world’s largest wooden building.

It was completed in 752 and houses one of the world’s largest Daibutsu (bronze Buddha statue):

You don’t really get a sense of his size as there is nothing for scale in those photos. Anyway, he is 15m tall.

Next to him is a golden Nyoirin-kannon statue.:

Lots of other interesting things in the Great Buddha Hall:

Behind the Daibutsu is a wooden pillar with a hole in its base the size of the Daibutsu’s nostril. It is said that those who can squeeze through the hole will be granted enlightenment in their next life. Maeve was up for that:

We left the Great Buddha Hall and kept wandering around the park.

Saw more sakura, of course. The wind picked up a bit from time to time so we got our first sakura snowstorm. I’m not sure you can tell from my photos, but the individual blossom petals were blowing past us like snowflakes.

You can see them on the ground at least:

We headed back to Osaka in the afternoon and did some shop wandering. I may have come across another Tokyu Hands and been helpless to resist the pull of even more notebooks:

And we visited a fourth Pokemon Centre. Some photos for Charlie:

Tomorrow we leave Osaka for Kyoto.