Stayed at an Airbnb about 10 minutes drive from the famous and very popular Nara Park. Nara Park is one of Japan’s oldest parks and dates back to the 1300th century and definitely worth visiting whether you’re staying in Nara or Osaka. It’s massive, over 1,000 acres and has over 1200 silka deer that roam around freely and try and steal your deer food, should you be brave enough to buy it and make it seen to the deer. Nara Park makes for some comedic scenes and if for nothing else, you should head there to see the loads of tourists, local and foreign, attempt to escape from the deer once they know you’ve got food for them. They roam around freely and you can pat them, take deer selfies and they’ve become probably a bit too friendly.
Nara Park
There’s some nice shrines inside Nara Park and some beautiful colours on the trees depending on what time of the year you go. Other than the park, admittedly there’s not a whole lot to do in Nara other than shrines and the like. However, you can easily spend a couple of days there although the deer things gets a bit boring after a day or two. I don’t think Nara in winter would be particularly nice, the snow might make it picturesque but it’d be much hard to get around and obviously much colder. I guess that depends on you, but the time we went, in November, was nice, cool but not so cold that you needed to wrap too much.
For kids, Nara, like pretty much the rest of Japan, is ideal. They’ll love the parks and open spaces, especially if you come from Hong Kong where a park is usually a piece of grass half the size of a tennis court and filled with smog, haze and pollution. See what Tips Toucan has for taking kids to Nara here.