Great post. Nara really was a beautiful place to visit. Until I read this, I never knew that Nara was Japan's capital (before Kyoto and Tokyo). Obviously a gap in my research - I'm not surprised to learn of this though as it's so beautiful.

We'll be visiting again in a few years to experience the rest that you described that we didn't see.

A tip for feeding the deer, only buy the cookies, and feed the deer, when you're within sight of the temple buildings.

When we visited, our cab dropped us off far from the temple buildings. There were deer there, and a lady in a hut with a huge, transparent box of cookies to sell.

We watched her loudly implore a tourist from the States to quickly get away from her hut/shop as the deer from the periphery were homing in on him. He didn't have a chance and was ambushed by very threatening deer who obviously hadn't got the be 'adorable and bow' memo. Instead the guy was threatened so much, he had to throw the cookies and really had to run for his life!

So please, get closer to the temple buildings, don't be tempted to buy cookies and feed the deer at the park's outer periphery. My advice is to go nearer to the temples, and watch other deer human interactions first, especially if you're with kids.

The deer closer to the temples are adorable and do bow before accepting cookies. They're great and seem very polite.

In short, the deer near to the temple might be messengers from the gods - the deer away from the temple areas, sadly, looked more like the couriers from hell.