Nara: where the deer bow back

Before Kyoto there was Nara, capital of Japan for most of the eighth century, and the scale of what got built then is still startling. **Todai-ji** shelters a bronze Buddha almost sixteen metres tall inside one of the largest wooden buildings on earth — and the hall standing today is only two-thirds the size of the original. Behind it, a pillar with a hole cut at the base draws a queue of children convinced that squeezing through brings good luck. Almost everything worth seeing sits inside **Nara Park**, and so do around a thousand sika deer. They are wild, protected as messengers of the gods, and many have learned to bow for a shika-senbei cracker — then to nudge, insistently, for a second one. The path from the park's edge climbs to *Kasuga Taisha*, a Shinto shrine hung with three thousand stone and bronze lanterns, the moss on them so thick it softens the whole approach. Kofuku-ji's five-storey pagoda marks the other side, and the wisteria and cedar of Mount Wakakusa rise behind it all. South of the park, *Naramachi* is a quieter Nara: former merchant townhouses with latticed fronts and long, narrow interiors, now sake shops, coffee counters and tiny museums. Nara is also where kakinoha-zushi comes from, mackerel sushi wrapped in a persimmon leaf, and where mochi is still pounded at ferocious speed by two men and a wooden mallet on Sanjo-dori. Most people come for half a day from Kyoto or Osaka; the ones who stay until the deer settle at dusk get the better version.