Nara travel info

Up the stairs at Kintetsu-Nara Station, five minutes toward the park, and a deer is standing in the middle of the pavement, staring at the people waiting for the lights. Pull out a deer cracker and it bows. Three seconds later there are four of them, and one is chewing your bag strap. Pretty much every day in Nara starts like this.

Cross the lawns, pass under the Great South Gate, and Todai-ji's Great Buddha Hall comes into view: a wooden building so big your sense of distance stops working. Inside, a bronze Buddha nearly 15 metres tall looks down out of the gloom. In the afternoon, walk the forest path to Kasuga Taisha, past row after row of mossy stone lanterns, with more deer wandering between them.

Most visitors come in by train from Osaka or Kyoto, spend half a day or a day, and leave. It's 40 minutes on Kintetsu from Osaka-Namba and 35–45 minutes from Kyoto, so after about 5pm the park suddenly empties out. Stay the night and you get the misty park at dawn and the lantern-lit lanes of Naramachi more or less to yourself. A day trip covers it; an overnight shows you a different town.

Kansai International Airport (KIX)

Osaka International Airport (Itami) (ITM)