Deer Park in Nara, Japan - A Fun Experience for Kids and Adults Alike

 There were a lot of things to see and do in Kyoto and its surrounding area. Therefore, we planned our stay for two nights while Er. headed back to Tokyo for the later part of the weekend.

We checked out of the hotel next morning and it was drizzling. We had not had good weather for the past couple of days. It has been raining since we left Tokyo.

Instead of  taking the 15 minutes walk to the train station,  we took a cab there and boarded a train heading to Nara, another city about 45 minutes away from Kyoto.

Stan suggested we visited this city because of its famous attraction - The Deer!

The Deer Park is located right next to the Todaiji Temple in Nara.

Todaiji Temple

It was a little inconvenient for us today as we already checked out from our hotel and we had our luggage with us.

Fortunately, we were able to have our suitcases stored at the Todaiji Temple's  reception area after we entered the temple ground. It made the rest of our visit much lighter and enjoyable.

The deer in the Park were free to roam around on their own

It kept on drizzling for hours. We got excited when we saw deer roaming in the park freely and sitting in front the temple ground.

 According to the material we read, there were about one thousand deer in the park. They were very tame indeed.

The day when we visited the deer were everywhere except inside the temple.

Visitors can pat the deer to your heart'c content!

The deer were very friendly and had no fear of people at all. They let people come close to them and did not scurry off when approached.

The deer came close to the visitors and would not go away!

Visitors could stroke the deer to their hearts' content, take pictures or feed them with the special deer crackers sold at the park by vendors.














Some of the deer were down right aggressive, following park visitors around and poking their noses into people's bags, clothes, and cranking their necks up to our faces sniffing for food.

As soon as the deer saw visitors with some deer food in their hands, they would right away follow these visitors and looking for their share of the food being given out.

The Deer Park in Nara - a fabulous place for tiny animal lovers!

 It was nice watching the interactions between the animals and people: Some visitors were so aggressively pursued by the deer that they had to shoo them  away.

 But the kids loved them! They squealed with delight whenever the deer ate and licked the food off their hands.

The deer were drawn to visitors to the park

A couple of deer kept sniffing our suitcases thinking that there might be food in there.

A couple of the deer were very curious in our luggage.

The deer were very persistent in their efforts looking for food.

Eventually, one of them chewed the luggage tag and swallowed it. He did it so fast that we did not even have time to stop him.

The deer went after our food during our lunch on the park bench

As the weather turned nice and the sun came out, we sat down on a park bench, took our  lunches out and planned to enjoy our sandwiches in the park.

 No sooner  had we taken our packed lunches out, the deer surrounded us and started poking their noses and aiming at our food. We could hardly had a moment to ourselves as the deer refused to leave us alone fighting for a taste of our food!

The deer could be aggressive at times!

We knew we would not have a chance with our lunches because we were clearly outnumbered by these aggressive hungry deer.


The Deer Park in Nara was one of the best experience we had with animals. I wish we could have our two sons here when they were young.  Kids would definitely have a fun and fantastic experience with the animals.

I highly recommend this place to parents with children!!! Free admission to the Deer Park and  you can play with the deer as long as you wish!

R.T.
Nara, Japan
August, 2013