2 January 2026 – Nara & Kyoto

We had started the New Year with an excellent day exploring Kyoto, rounded out by the amazing Golden Pavilion in the beautiful afternoon light. Our plan for the second day of 2026 was a day trip to Nara from our base in Kyoto.

As it was still New Year’s holidays, we knew it would be busy so we set a pre 7am alarm to be up and out early. It was a chilly 1 degree, feels like zero, on the way to the local Yamashina station. We were into Kyoto station, well before 8am. We were planning to get on the non-express train to Nara as it was a lot cheaper and only a little slower than the ‘express’. Unfortunately google maps and the signs in the train station didn’t match up, and we couldn’t quite figure out where the slower train left from. We gave up and decided to follow the signs and go on the express, which turned out to be the cheaper non-express anyway.

The train was fairly quiet and we all enjoyed the hour of sitting down, watching the Japanese scenery zip by. An hour or so later and we were in Nara and set off from the station towards the main temples, shrines…… and of course deer.

Off to explore Nara….

Sanjo-dori Street, the shopping street running from JR Nara station towards the Sarusawa Pond and Nara Park had not much open yet as it was still only around 9am. After battling crowds the first couple of days in Japan we were hoping it would stay this quiet, but were pretty sure we weren’t that lucky.

We could already smell some delicious food cooking though, which we’d have to come back to later. The freshly cooking mochi was something the kids decided we’d have to investigate at a later time, as they were on a mission to find the deer.

The street is about 1.7km from the station up to the Park. There are buses but we were more than happy to stretch our legs and check out the scenery on the way. Soon we were at Sarusawa Pond and across the road from Nara Park.

We figured there was no point looking at anything until we saw the deer, so any temples or shrines were in the list of ‘later’ actiivites.

Deer, deer, cracker obsessed deer!

The deer in Nara are well known for being a little over-enthusiastic. The kids knew they could be overly friendly trying to get deer crackers (which are crack to deer seemingly) and you shouldn’t put the crackers in your pockets. We’d agreed to buy some crackers from some of the many purveyors of crackers and it was deer time.

Each kid got a packet of crackers from the first deer cracker seller we found and were immediately mobbed by deer, despite there being plenty of other people around, also handing out crackers. It took about 3.2 seconds for the deer to start running at us.

Pretty quickly Astrid was covered in deer slobber and in tears, having her bottom bitten for crackers.

Zinnia was also not a fan, and was simultaneously wanting to pat the deer, being fascinated by them and being worried about being bowled over.

I ended up holding the crackers above my head and giving them out one at a time to the very excitable deer.

Even when you thought you were safe a deer would sneak up behind you and search your pockets for crackers…..

The deer did respect the ‘no crackers’ signal and soon when we wandered from the busy area to a quieter space, the deer were calmer and we had some good pats and fun bowing to the deer.

Soon Zinnia went back to loving the deer as we found some friendly babies, who were happy for pats. Once our crackers were exhausted the deer calmed down a lot and were much easier to manage. They were generally happy to have some pats and then would run off to the next person in search of crackers when they got sick of us.

It was hilarious watching the deer cross the roads and cars having to stop for them as they wandered across.

The deer do bow for crackers so we had fun seeing which ones would bow for us and giving them pats. The further away from the cracker sellers you got, the calmer and more chilled the deer seemed to be.

Temples, shrines and more deer!

We walked down the forest paths to the to the Kasuga Taisha, which still had plenty of deer, lots of crowds and many deer cracker sellers. The deer here were pretty friendly, as long as you didn’t have pockets full of crackers!

The walk to the Todaiji Temple was absolutely packed with people by this time of the morning, a lot of tourists as well as people out for New Years celebrations. There were also plenty of deer wandering between the street and souvenir stores.

We enjoyed seeing the deer detect anyone with crackers and mob them. There were also lazy deer laying all over the sides of the paths.

The deer enjoyed the odd fisticuffs together. We also loved the signs for bicycle parking, where the area was full of deer!

Todaiji Temple

The temple was very busy so again we checked out the outside and had plenty of pats with deer who were all over the place. The ones up here were pretty friendly.

There were so many deer that you had to step over them to get to the temple and they were pretty happy to have pats. Zinnia was back to being a deer lover again.

With the crowds we decided not to go into the temple to see the giant Buddha but there were still some other giant statues on the outside of the temple, along with all the deer of course.

The Kagami-ike ‘mirror pond’ is a fabulous place to take photos of the Todaiji Temple. It was strangely not crowded here. I think all the tourists were heading in the opposite direction. So we enjoyed the views and relative solitude for a bit.

Back to the temple and the kids couldn’t resist a few more deer pats. Everyone was back to being quite fans of the deer now we weren’t being mobbed or having our bottoms bitten!

The deer just sitting in front of the temples chilling and unfussed by all the crowds were rather special. You had to be careful where you put your feet as they were at times quite well camouflaged.

Next it was off to the Kofuku-ji temple complex. On the way we saw a mass running of the deer as they all simultaneously took off and bolted across the park, and across roads with traffic. We have no idea why but it was amusing to watch hundreds of deer running along, making everyone stop for them.

We had a wonderful time with the deer and all ended up pretty good friends!

Kofuku-Ji Shrine

The famous pagoda of the Kofuku-ji shrine is currently being repaired and fully enclosed so you can’t see it, but there were plenty of other buildings to look at.

That lovely grey building is enclosing the 5 story pagoda but there were some other buildings for us to check out.

We’d been in Japan less than 3 days and had already lost count of the number of shrines and temples but they were all rather different to each other!

Lunch and okonomiyaki!

By now it was 11.45am and everyone was getting hungry. We head back to the main street and found a local place that we didn’t have to wait too long for and had at least 1 vegetarian option.

The tables had heated hot plates in the centre where you keep your food warm. It seemed unlikely we’d get through a meal without Soren fiddle-fingers burning himself. So while we were waiting for a table to be ready, we were debating the wise-ness of our dining decision! The food smelt delicious though so we were hoping for the best.

Soren not only didn’t burn himself but he also did an excellent job cooking the yakisoba (which sadly wasn’t vegetarian).

Everyone enjoyed the yakisoba and the okonomiyaki but apparently the veggie one wasn’t as good as the seafood one for the meat eaters.

This turned out to be one of our favourite meals in Japan, and it was very reasonably priced too, at only $30AUD including Anto’s beer!

Shopping, mochi and snow!

With full bellies and feeling a bit warmer, we then checked out the now bustling Sanjo-dori street and succumbed to the delicious smells of fresh mochi with red bean filling and roasted soybean coating, that had huge lines.

They were pretty interesting, although Soren wasn’t a fan. I’m not a massive mochi fan but these were pretty good, especially as they were warm and freshly cooked.

There were plenty of covered arcade streets for us to explore on our trip back towards the train station.

We loved the flute player and her deer!

It was now really cold and it started snowing on us as we walked towards Nara station. It was our first snow of the trip!

Back to Kyoto…..

Having just come from an Aussie Summer we were all feeling a bit cold, despite the allure of the fluttering snow! We farewelled the deer and caught the slow train back to Kyoto, enjoying the views on the way back, while Zinnia napped on Anto’s lap and Soren laid all over me.

Everyone voted for some shopping time in the warm, so we checked out the giant Aeon mall across the road from Kyoto station and hit up Muji and Uniqlo.

We also found a giant supermarket and stocked up on snacks and dinner sushi. The array of fresh sushi in the supermarket was impressive. Both Kyoto Station and Yamashina station were still pretty busy but were not finding it too hard to find our way around and it was a short trip back to our warm Airbnb with our shopping bags full of supplies.

We voted for dinner in the apartment, with random supermarket and convenience store sushi, ramen and egg rolls as it was 2 degrees and snowing in Yamashina too.

After another day of 20,000 to 30,000 steps (depending on your leg length) the kids were well and truly tuckered out and quickly collapsed for day, floor beds and all!

Up next….

Our final full day in Kyoto and we were off to Fushimi Inari, those famous red Torii gates that are on every tourist picture of Kyoto. We also checked out the bamboo grove and Arashiyama.