Nara - 奈良

Nara is about a 2 hour train ride from my university housing. The main attractions of Nara are the deer park and Todai-ji. Deer can be found roaming around any grassy/park area in Nara, however most gather at Nara Park. There are dozens of deer lounging under the trees and walking around. Around the park there are several vendors that sell senbei (せんべい), which are crackers that are flavorless so the deer can eat them. A pack of 6-7 flat circular crackers are usually sold for ¥150 (>$1.50). Of course there are a whole bunch of deer that crowd around the stand, and once you get the crackers in your hand, the deer swarm towards you. I was unfortunate enough to turn around only to get headbutted by a deer (with lil horns!!) in the stomach. This lil evil deer, we'll call him Don, then decided to snatch a cracker from me. But Don wasn't finished with me yet. The park isn't all grass, there is also dirt. So I guess Don had inhaled some dirt because he then decided to sneeze all over me. Then he wouldn't leave me alone. I wanted to feed some other nice deer, but everytime I held a cracker out for another deer, Don swooped in and ate it. Luckily after he saw that I was out of crackers, he deemed me useless and walked (trotted??) away.

Now not all deer are as aggressive as Don. Many of them are very calm and chill. It's easy to pet them, but their fur is very wire-like and coarse (the complete opposite of what I expected!). Usually when they see you have snacks, they'll follow a little bit behind you. And when you hold a cracker up and bow to them, they'll bob their lil head back at you (like Buckbeak in Harry Potter). Another deer decided to sneak up behind me and nibble at my overalls... even though I didn't have food for him. My favorite deer had to be the one who ate a plastic bag that was flying in the wind.


After petting and playing with the cute deer, my friends and I were heading to Todai-ji. Along the way there were several gardens that were very peaceful. There were two right next to each other (I can't remember the names of them), but one of them was free and the other had a small fee. Since we're college students we only went into the free one but we were able to sneak a peek into the one that cost money haha. It was very nice to sit in such a quite, beautiful garden in the middle of the city. There was a small little snack restaurant that served some traditional Japanese snacks.

Green tea, green tea soft serve, mochi in red bean porridge

Peaceful garden with lil fishies in the pond

Todai-ji temple was about a 10-15 minute walk from Nara Park. There is a fee (I think of ¥500 but not too sure) to get into the temple. I believe the temples have fees in order to help pay for maintence of the grounds. This temple is home to one of the largest (or possibly the largest?) Buddha statue. It is made out of bronze, and next to it there was a smaller statue. It was an amazing sight to see, but of course since it is a tourist attraction, there were many many groups of other people there. There were even groups of Japanese students on a field trip. Outside the temple there are again deer wandering.

After we walked back to the station, we explored the area around it. There was a shop that made mochi in front of you. I have some videos below, but of course since I'm a shorty who was in the back, I didn't get a very good video of the process. My friends decided to go to an owl cafe, but I hate birds so I decided to go hang out in a cat cafe (I'll go more into detail about animal cafes and whatnot in another section maybe). Then we all decided to finally try fluffy pancakes for the first time! (TL;DR : they were delicious)