It was a slow morning. I went through the photos and wrote the diary. We had to go and wash our clothes, so we went to the coin laundry.
Once I was done, quite late, we went straight to the Nara Park. Our hotel is just at the station that goes directly there, so that was convenient.
I really like how Osaka and Nara are neatly separated by a thin mountain range. The view from the train was more and more beautiful as you get to the mountains, although that actually pass through them is in the tunnel.
Literally the moment we got out from the station and walked just a little, we already saw a deer. We walked to it and it was pretty much the first time I saw one in real life, and we were confused by the fact that nobody seemed to care about it at all.
We ate a tasty curry and then headed into the park.
We quickly realized why nobody cared about that one deer, because holy shit, they’re EVERYWHERE. While I was going here, I thought there’d be a bit of deer here and there, maybe on the hill, and man how wrong I was. There’s literally thousands and thousands of them walking around the people. At some point it felt like there’s more deer than people.
They just walk through the roads, in the parks, on the crosswalks. Not scared by people at all, following, bowing, eating from hands. It was actually kinda surreal lol.
We had to go through a couple of different shops to find deer crackers, they were sold out almost everywhere. We finally found a stand and got 2 packs. Very quickly, we realized that you actually have to pay to not have them, because God, the deer are actually not normal around them, lol.
Some deer are polite and walk slowly and bow, but most just go crazy and start following you, chewing on everything you have, running after you. And this will happen with like 5-10 deer at once, so you get surrounded. We had to run away from the deer a couple of times, and then just got rid of the damn crackers…
We walked to the Wakakusayama hill entrance, and apparently they would stop accepting new visitors literally in 10 minutes… It was 16:20, so we accidentally barely got in time. The hill was so beautiful… There was like literally 1000x less people than at the bottom, and way less deer (for better or worse). It was just nice and chill.
I talked to my family, listened to music, walked around other hills. We’ve waited until the sunset. There was a wedding couple, I think, which was photographed by their parents. I can’t stop thinking how cool it is that old people… actually do things here. In Ukraine, when you’re old, all you do is just drink and watch TV, and most hobbies as old person are considered cringe. But people here continue traveling, do photography, etc etc. It’s so nice.
We’ve waited way past the sunset, until the beautiful towers on the hills started blinking their red lights. There was almost nobody around at this point, and we were worried if gate would be still open, and if we could even leave. It was fine though, there was an exit-only gate, thankfully.
There was a long walk to the station after. The park had completely different atmosphere at night, and most deer have gone… somewhere. Not sure where. To their homes and beds I guess. And then we went too.
