Japan's ancient capital — 1,200 wild deer roam the park, the Great Buddha sits in a wooden hall that's been the world's largest for 1,300 years, and mochi is pounded in 40-second bursts
Nara is Japan's first permanent capital (710–784 CE) and one of Asia's greatest repositories of ancient wooden architecture — a city where over 1,200 deer (shika, considered sacred messengers of the Shinto deities) roam freely through Nara Park, bowing to receive shika-senbei (deer crackers) from visitors, and where the Tōdai-ji temple's Daibutsuden hall has been the largest wooden building in the world for 1,300 years, housing a 15-metre bronze Buddha (the Daibutsu) that required the entire copper and tin production of 8th-century Japan to cast. Nara is often described as a day trip from Kyo…
Nara (originally Heijō-kyō) was established as Japan's first permanent capital in 710 CE by Empress Genmei, modelled on the Tang Chinese capital Chang'an in a grid pattern. The Nara period (710–784 CE) was Japan's great age of Buddhist temple construction — Tōdai-ji, Kōfuku-ji, Gangō-ji, and Hōryū-ji (the world's oldest surviving wooden structures, built 607 CE, 20 km south of Nara) were all built or completed during this period, funded by a centralized state that had just adopted Chinese administrative systems. Emperor Shōmu's 752 CE dedication of the Great Buddha required 10,000 tonnes of c…