Nara is a smaller city about an hour's bus ride from Kyoto or Osaka. Its claim to tourist fame is a giant statue of Buddha in a temple there, but also a concentration of sika deer (shika in Japanese) in the central temple-park area. Tourists are encouraged to feed these lazy denizens, and there are lots of cute interactions between local toddlers and the animals (although the deer, actually a species of elk, are present throughout the country, we saw no deer elsewhere in Japan). Visitors are warned that the males become aggressive at times in their eagerness for shika-senbei, deer-crackers, and have occasionally bitten tourists. For visitor safety, the antlers of male deer in the park are removed yearly. On the other hand, many of the deer, like the shika-san shown here, have learned to bow as part of ceremonially charming potential food-donors.
(To view the final pictures in brief video format, click on the central arrow, then immediately on the silver arrow at the upper left of the enlargement.)
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