The Deer at Nara Park
I got up early and checked out of my hotel after breakfast. The walk to Nara Park wasn't far.
Nara Park was established in 1880 and is one of the oldest parks in Japan. The legend is that in the year 768, the first of the four gods of Kasugataisha Shrine traveled from the current Ibaraki Prefecture to Mt. Mikasa in Nara, on a white deer. After that deer were considered sacred. Currently, there are around 1400 wild deer living in and around Nara Park. They are protected as Natural Monuments.
There are vendors around the park selling special deer crackers, which are the only food visitors are allowed to feed to the deer. Some deer get rather pushy about getting the crackers.
Every October, there is a special ritual to painlessly cut the antlers of the deer. If you are interested in the ceremony, check out this article.
I think this woman was feeding the deer crackers, then suddenly she was running away.
When the deer want to cross the street, all the vehicles let them.
This was the only deer I saw with a collar. I don't know what that is about.
The deer are interesting, but they aren't the only interesting thing in this park...
5 comments:
I have visited here, too. I was very surprised to see deers cross the road walking a pedestrian crossing.
I once stayed in a hot spring up the mountain from the Park and there the deer also roamed around freely holding up traffic and making the bus timetable very uncertain.
Deer are treated as messengers of the Gods, and are treated with priority throughout a wide area of Nara.
However, when I visited Nara on a school trip when I was a student, a deer almost ate the hem of my uniform and my skirt got covered in deer saliva, so I have decided not to approach deer ever since.
I looked into the collared deer you found. That collar seems to have a GPS attached to in to monitor the deer’s behavior.
The deer in Nara are not kept in captivity, so they are wild deer, so their behavior is being investigated. sometimes there are deer that play tricks in private houses and fields, so this survey might be useful for countermeasures.
"the only food visitors are allowed to feed to the deer" - hah! Someone should tell the deer that!
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