Handpicked experience · Osaka
Osaka, Japan
A day in the only Japanese capital abandoned rather than outgrown, where a bronze Buddha consumed the nation's copper and poisoned its gilders, and the bowing deer are wild animals begging.
Todai-ji Temple representative temple of Nara, where the Great Buddha is very famous.
Kasuga Grand Shrine is a red-painted and elegant shrine, which has been famous since ancient times as a famous place for wisteria.
In Nara Park approximately 1,200 deer inhabit in the garden.
Kofuku-ji is the former temple built as a private residence of Fujiwara Kamatari in Yamashina, Kyoto.
The only Japanese capital the court walked away from
A bronze that drew on the copper supply of an entire country
A hall rebuilt smaller than the one it replaced and still enormous
Wild animals with legal protection, grazing between monasteries
A guide who travels the way residents do rather than by car
Under an hour from Osaka, and walkable at the other end
A private day in Nara from Osaka, travelling by train and on foot rather than by car: the temple park, the Great Buddha hall and the streets of the old capital, at whatever pace suits you.
This was the seat of government for most of the eighth century, and it is the only Japanese capital that was abandoned rather than outgrown.
The reason was the institution the court itself had built. Enormous state-sponsored monasteries accumulated land, wealth and political weight until the clergy were a faction in government, and the emperor's answer was to move the capital away from them entirely. The court left in 784; the temples stayed.
That single decision is why the city you walk through feels the way it does. Nara never became a metropolis, so eighth-century monasteries sit in a small city rather than being swallowed by one, with deer grazing between them.
The Great Buddha was cast in the 740s and consumed most of the copper available to the country at the time, along with an imperial appeal for donations that reached into the provinces.
The gilding was worse. Gold was applied as an amalgam with mercury, painted on and then driven off with heat, which vaporised the mercury over and over across a statue the height of a building. The workers breathed it. Contemporary accounts of illness around the project are not subtle, and modern historians treat it as one of the earliest large-scale industrial poisonings on record.
The hall around it burned twice. What stands now dates from 1709 and is about two-thirds the width of the original, and it remains among the largest wooden buildings on earth. The lost third is the part worth imagining.
The deer wandering the grounds are legally wild, protected as natural monuments, and belong to nobody. They are not fed by the city, and the crackers sold to visitors are a licensed product rather than the animals' diet.
The bowing is the part people get wrong. It looks like courtesy and it is learned begging: a gesture that produces food, refined over generations of tourists. They are strong animals in a bad mood when the crackers run out, and the head-butting is not affectionate.
Going by train from Osaka takes under an hour and drops you within walking distance of everything, which is why a private guide on public transport works better here than a car and driver.
The park is large and the walking is more than people expect, with gravel and slopes between the main buildings.
Deer are everywhere, including on paths and around food, and bags with anything edible in them will be investigated. Paper maps and tickets get eaten regularly, which is funnier before it happens to yours.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
The monasteries the court had funded grew into a political faction, and the emperor's response was to move the government away from them in 784.
Eighth-century monasteries in a city that never became a metropolis, which is why they sit in open parkland rather than inside a modern centre.
Most of the copper the country could supply in the 740s, together with a nationwide appeal for donations.
Gold was applied as a mercury amalgam and the mercury was then driven off with heat, repeatedly, on a statue the size of a building. The workers breathed the vapour.
No. It burned twice, and the present building dates from 1709 at roughly two-thirds the width of the first one, though it remains among the largest wooden structures anywhere.
Nobody. They are wild animals with legal protection as natural monuments, and the city does not feed them.
Because bowing produces crackers. It is learned behaviour rather than courtesy, refined across generations of visitors.
Mostly, but they are large and pushy when food runs out, and the head-butting is not affection.