Summer Trip Part 5: Nara

(continued from part 4)

As I said before, while in Tenri, we took a day off to go visit Nara City.

Nara was Japan's first permanent capital after unification, even if only for a very short period of time from 710-784. Nara City is located at the very northern end of the prefecture, but it's only a 15 minute train ride from Tenri.

The main attraction in Nara is Nara Park. It has a large amount of historical sites, like shrines, temples, and a large wooden gate. It is also home to the largest Buddha statue in Japan, although I didn't bother to go see it.

Big ol' gate.

Structure that houses the giant Buddha statue.

Probably the most popular attraction in Nara Park isn't a landmark. Instead, they can be found wandering around on the grass, prostrated in the shade, or conglomerating around tourists waiting for a snack.

Moooooooooo

The park itself is very large, and near the center, there are packs and packs of these spotted deer. Apparently, they used to be wild, but decades of people feeding them has somewhat domesticated them. Throughout the park, you can also find stands selling deer biscuits (or crackers), called shika senbei, that you can feed to the deer. The only problem is that the deer tend to gather around these cracker stands, and when they see tourists buying some, they start swarming.

The deer themselves aren't very large, maybe the size of a large breed of dog. However, they are pretty aggressive. Tourists organizations say that these deer are special because they will bow their heads to ask for crackers. In reality, they do something more on the lines of a headbutt, and the ones with big antlers will bow just to whack you in the arm with their headgear. They're also known to nibble at rears and crotches, and I had the privilege of watching a Chinese tourist get a hole bitten through his T-shirt. Imagine a pack of about 15 of these guys all trying to get at the crackers in your hand. The result is a lot of terrified tourists fleeing for their lives:

We bought a few packs of crackers and managed to escape to a place with relatively few deer. Then, the feeding began:

Good deer... please don't gore me...

Kerchomp!

I'm sorry, I have no more.

The deer are definitely aggressive, as some Japanese friends have warned me, but there is an easy way to repel them. They will get all up in your business, but they actually hate being touched. If they're getting too close for comfort, all you need to do is start patting them on the head. They'll recoil and back off immediately. If you try to keep petting them, they'll bob and weave like boxers to avoid your hands.

As we were taking a break on a bench under an awning, we noticed a very calm and gentle deer sitting beside us. We decided to have a bit more fun feeding this one by making it into a photoshoot!

Nyam~

After we were done feeding the deer, we ate some omuraisu omelet rice, bought some frozen mango cubes from 7-11, and got on the train back to Tenri for the rest of おぢばがえり.

At the end of that, we took the train back to Osaka to catch our flight back to Tokyo. Before our vacation was over, however, we still had a day to have fun in Tokyo! See you next time!