Visiting the deer in Nara Park
Without a doubt, Nara was one of my favorite “only in Japan” experiences. Nara Park is most famed for its herds of tame deer: as soon as you walk out of the main train station and into the park, you’re surrounded by more deer than you can count. It is absolutely wild!
Established in 1880, the sprawling Nara Park is one of the oldest parks in Japan. The deers reportedly have been around almost from the beginning: they were considered divine and sacred because of a bit of local folklore (a god supposedly visited riding a deer), but are now designated a national treasure. There are now more than one thousand deer living in the park!
You can buy deer crackers from vendors throughout the park for a few yen and the deer will pose just like a pup for a treat. That said: they are wild animals and they can be quite impatient if you try to tease them! They can also get a little bit aggressive if you buy the crackers and don’t immediately start handing them out: we went on a rainy day, and David got quickly nosed in the rump by a muddy deer right after he bought some deer crackers. Don’t wear anything you don’t mind getting a bit dirty! 
In terms of logistics, Nara is located about 40 minutes to an hour on a train either Kyoto or Osaka. The park is basically directly outside the station, and there are lots of local maps displayed: it’s pretty tough to miss, and even if you do, you can truly just follow the crowds. There are express trains available for which you do have to buy an extra ticket: make sure you head to the right platform and have the right ticket to board. There are plenty of signs (in English) with information about express versus local, and trains leave fairly regularly throughout the day. As with most Japanese train stations, there are plenty of lockers in the train station: we actually stopped in Nara from the morning on our way from Kyoto to Osaka, and just stored all of our luggage for a few hours for the equivalent of a few dollars while we explored Nara. 
Supposedly, the deer are trained to “bow” to you for a cracker. It’s not a guarantee, but we definitely had it happen and it was so lovely. However, you have to be a bit patient, and able to keep calm under all of the deer pressure.
All in all, it is such a quirky experience! I was super nervous before we went: with all of the rain, would deer even be out? Would it be as magical as it looks in photos? Would David be annoyed that I dragged him to this Insta-famous spot? Even though the grounds were muddy and we certainly weren’t the only tourists there, we still had so much fun! It was actually a great spot for people-watching and being able to interact with the deer was so unexpectedly fun. It also felt so much like something you couldn’t do anywhere else: I’m so glad we took the time and made the effort to go to Nara Park. I loved it! 
