Nara is a lovely little town in the middle of Japan’s largest island Honshu and it used to be the first permanent capital of the country in the 8th century. It’s most famous for the multitude of temples concentrated in a relatively small area making them convenient to visit all at once. And for the amazing opportunity it gives to meet wildlife face to face!
The town is a great spot for a day trip from Kyoto or Osaka as it’s really close and its size is perfect so you can visit everything in one day. Getting there is pretty easy on the Shinkansen, which is how we got there from Kyoto during our trip.
We arrived at the train station to find that the main historic area is just a short walk away – situated in a beautiful park that you can probably reach in under 10 mins. Unless you get distracted by the hordes of adorable deer that live in the park! There are roughly 1.3 thousand deer living in Nara and the town gets visited by approx. 13 million people every year (pre-covid numbers) so the animals are highly socialised. They are perfectly fine with close contact and even touching (yes, you can pet them and take selfies), and much like domestic cats they have learned to use their power of cuteness to get food from people. The whole experience of being among them is a bit surreal and quite unique!
Naturally, we stopped to give them some treats and play with them for a bit. No idea what deer eat? Don’t worry – there are multiple street vendors who sell special deer cookies and for something like $1-2 you can get a bunch and make some deer very happy.
You know how everyone in Japan is incredibly polite and well mannered? Well to our dismay this also applied to the deer – there is a little game they play where you bow to each other and then you give them a cookie for being such good boys. Mad, isn’t it?!
P.S. These deer don’t joke about wanting food so they’ll grab just about anything – your clothes, your bags, they will even chew (and swallow!!) food while it’s still inside a plastic bag. Be careful, even though they’re friendly they’re still wild animals!
Back to the cultural bit…
There are numerous Buddhist temples and pagodas and the entire site has been listed as UNESCO World Heritage. What’s quite interesting is that they all have a slightly different flavour, despite all being created around the same time period.
The one with the tall pagoda (Kofuku-ji)
The first temple you’d visit on your way from the train station is Kofuku-Ji. It is said to have been built by the wife of the then ruler of the Nara prefecture in order to help him recover from an illness. The temple itself is not that interesting, especially considering what else is around, so you might skip going in altogether, unless you’re a temple buff and keen to explore everything about it.
What’s exciting about this one is the 5-storey pagoda just outside the main temple grounds. It is the second tallest pagoda of this type in Japan and it’s one of the best preserved. It’s quite a spectacular welcome to the historic part of the town and it’s of course surrounded by deer.
P.S. We have shockingly bad pictures of this pagoda, so it's best to go and see it for yourself :)
The one with the huge Buddha (Todai-ji)
Possibly the most famous temple in Nara is Todai-ji. The temple itself is remarkable – it’s the largest wooden structure in the world. Despite its massive size today’s temple is a reconstruction that only goes about 2/3 of the height of the original.
The building we see today was actually constructed around the huge Buddha statue inside that rises to about 15 metres. Taking a good photo of the statue is quite difficult as you can’t get a good angle to capture the whole thing. We recommend that you save yourself some time and inconvenience trying to get both yourselves and Buddha into the shot and just enjoy the sight.
The one with the lanterns (Kasuga Taisha shrine)
This was our favourite cultural site in Nara. After visiting Todai-ji we headed further into the forest and up a cosy pathway laced with freestanding stone lanterns. After stepping over a few deer we reached the shinto shrine and got inside the main area. It consists of several small buildings featuring some amazing architectural patterns which are delightful on their own.
The exciting part here are the hundreds of bronze lanterns that cover the outdoor alleys and the insides of some of the buildings. The intricate designs are actually different in each lantern, you should really go up close and admire the craftsmanship required to build them. The lanterns were donated by worshippers which is probably why they’re all different. That and the lack of mass production at the time 😉
The atmosphere of the place is amazing and we strongly recommend that you don’t skip this one. Don’t forget to stroll around the shrine’s grounds and find the small building that has a lantern display in a dark room. It’s beautiful as it shows the lantern’s beauty in it’s entirety and we found that bit quite moving.
The one in the outskirts of town (Horyu-ji)
This was our favourite cultural site in Nara. After visiting Todai-ji we headed further into the forest and up a cosy pathway laced with freestanding stone lanterns. After going around a few deer we reached the shinto shrine and got inside the main area. It consists of several small buildings featuring some amazing architectural patterns which are delightful on their own. benefit to that was that there were no other people and we had almost a private tour. The downside was that we didn’t have time to cover the whole complex so we only saw the main buildings.
There is another pretty massive wooden building that is the main temple, another impressive pagoda and a small, curiously round building where the legend says Buddha once meditated.
Despite not being able to see everything, the trip was well worth it. Since the complex is not central it gave us the opportunity to visit a cute neighbourhood and see a bit of Japan's everyday life. The buildings were alternating with the most perfect looking rice fields, children were riding their bikes around, and as in the rest of the country everything seemed to have its place. We even got to visit a local supermarket where we found the biggest variety of weird looking sea life (seafood?) and a satisfactory assortment of craft beers.
Something to note: the temple area is a 20-something minute walk from the train station, which can be exhausting especially on hot day like the one when we visited (in the end of September). There’s a shuttle taking tourists straight to the temple and that might be a better idea than walking.