There’s a city called Nara that’s about an hour away from Osaka by train; its claim to fame is Nara Park, an absolutely enormous park that’s populated by over a thousand exceptionally friendly deer.
These deer have been co-existing with people in this park for hundreds of years, so they’re not afraid of people at all.
I sort of figured they’d be in one small area of the park, but nope — everywhere you go, hey, there’s a deer.
Some of them are just wandering around.
Other’s are just chillin’.
A lot of them are hoping for food. There are several vendors throughout the park that sell a bundle of special deer crackers for 150 yen.
There’s pretty much always a deer hanging out nearby, hoping for a quick snack.
Once you’ve got these crackers, hungry deer will come right up to you.
What’s this? A cracker?
One please.
Nom.
This never gets old.
Just stick a cracker out and within seconds, here comes a deer.
I have a video of this, too. Note: these deer are so Japanese, they’ll sometimes bow to you before or after you give them a cracker. You can see it a couple of times in the video.
You also occasionally see deer getting into fights.
These guys butted their heads together until one of them gave up, bowed to the other, and backed off.
There’s also a couple of temples in the park.
And yeah, of course there are deer hanging out there, too.
It’s a pretty amazing place.