Our Deer Friends in Nara Japan

One of the prettiest small towns in Japan is not located too far from Kyoto.  It is the town of Nara and it has one of the most interesting parks in the world.  What makes it so interesting is that the park is home to hundreds of very tame deer that you can feed by hand and often times pet.  The town is small but it used to be the culture epicenter of Japan (much as Kyoto is today) and it is home to hundreds of temples.

Eoin had a chance to visit some of his deerest friends today.  In many circles in Japan he is known as the deer whisperer because he can seemingly speak to deer and inform them of the best course of action.  If they get frisky or startled he can quickly calm them with a few words.  No one really knows what he is telling them but it works.

The deer were very cute.  Most of them looked like Bambi and were so friendly.  We could not believe that you could actually walk right up to them and pet them.  Eoin bought about 5 packages of crackers and fed the deer.   He was careful to avoid walking in their poop too, or sit in it for that matter.

Apparently the deer in Nara have been being fed by the locals for hundreds of years.  The deer really keep this city flooded in tourist.  As a matter of fact there were thousands and thousands of school kids that were on the train with us headed to the Deer Park. What was most interesting is the fascination that all of the girls had with Eoin.  Eoin was basically the Beatles today and had girls coming up left and right asking to take photos with him.  I am sure that Eoin’s face is probably on many of their Facebook’s tonight.

The park had many interesting parts including the temples where people could get their books signed by monks and other people.  We bought Eoin a book and started to fill it up.  It is a tradition for people in Japan to fill these books up with stamps and memorabilia from places they had visited.

One of the temples had these post all around it with thousands of hearts around it.  The hearts all were written by people to other people that they loved.  I found one heart in particular that was most interesting.

Another long day for us.  We must have walked about 7 miles which gets tough when you are lugging your 25 pound backpack around all day in the hot sun.  I looked at the weather forecast and the rest of the week is forecasted to be cloudy here.  Talk about June Gloom – this place has it worse than San Diego.