Nara
Japan's first permanent capital, now a day trip with twelve hundred deer
- When to go
- October 18° · 9 rainy days
- Per day
- €€price 2 of 5
- How many days
- 1days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Nearest airport
- 35 km Osaka · 53 km Kobe
- Right now
Nara is a day trip from Kyoto or Osaka, and that is its honest measure: everything worth seeing sits in one park you can walk in three hours, including the country's largest bronze Buddha and the deer that bow for a biscuit.
Nara was the capital from 710 to 784, before the court moved to Kyoto. That is why a town this size holds buildings of this rank: Todai-ji was raised as the head temple of the entire country, and the bronze Buddha inside was cast in 752 and stands over fifteen metres high. The hall covering it dates from 1709 and, despite being smaller than the original, is still one of the largest wooden buildings in the world.
Entry to the Great Buddha Hall is ¥800; the temple opens 7:30–17:30 from April to October and 8:00–17:00 in winter. The early opening is a real advantage here — until nine in the morning the hall is half empty, and the coaches only start arriving after ten.
There are about twelve hundred deer in the park, protected as a natural monument. The biscuits sold for them (shika senbei) are deliberately bland so that people do not eat them. The animals are used to people but not tame: they push, they bite bags, and they follow anyone holding a biscuit without handing it over. If you feed them, do it quickly and then show empty palms — that is the signal they have learned.
What to see in Nara
Todai-ji
The Great Buddha Hall with its bronze statue cast in 752. Entry ¥800, opens at 7:30 in summer — the only way to see it without crowds.
Kasuga Taisha
A shrine with some three thousand stone and bronze lanterns along its approach. They are lit only twice a year, in February and August.
Nara-koen
The park everything else stands in, and where the deer live. Walked freely, no ticket, and the only part of the visit that costs nothing.
Naramachi
The old merchant quarter of narrow wooden houses, south of the park. No deer, no tour groups — this is where you have lunch.
Kofuku-ji
A five-storey pagoda beside the park, the second tallest in Japan. Raised after a fire in 1426, and under wraps since 2023 — the restoration runs to 2034, so the pagoda itself cannot be seen.
Isuien
A seventeenth-century garden that borrows the hills and the roof of Todai-ji as its backdrop. About ¥1,200, and the quietest hour in Nara.
Two things you probably did not know
The deer in Nara are protected as a natural monument and roam the city freely. They have learned to bow to people to be given a biscuit. They picked the gesture up from visitors, not from any trainer.
Todaiji was for centuries the largest wooden building in the world, and the present version from 1709 is a third smaller than the original. Inside sits a bronze Buddha fifteen metres tall, cast in the eighth century from nearly all the bronze in the country.
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