Shika no Tsunokiri (鹿の角きり)

Today I went to Nara together with a friend who is currently visiting Japan from Canada.
While we were there, we saw a rare (only happens one weekend in a year) event.

I was also really happy when we stopped by the information booth. I had decided to talk in Japanese because there had just been a couple ahead of us that took FOREVER and I thought it would be faster. It was, and the woman seemed really happy that I could talk in Japanese and complimented me a lot and could tell even before she asked that I live here. Just made me happy, and I wanted to share, that's all.

**Now, since I know that some people may not agree with this particular practice, let me just say now, it doesn't actually harm the deer, but, if you don't want to keep reading or looking at this post...understood. You don't have to keep reading or look at the video.  It's your choice.**

The event is called Shika no Tsunokiri, which is a deer horn cutting event.  Apparently this event has been happening since 1671, so almost 350 years!

Anyway, so this event was created as a result of a desire to help the male deer become less aggressive at this time of year (their mating season), so that they don't cause harm to people or other things (like tress)

In Nara Park, there is a special area specifically created for this event.

The enclosure

To begin the event, 3 males are released into the enclosure, and then the group of men who are to capture it come out.

Some of them help to herd the deer to run in the direction they want, while the others attempt to catch them (by the horns with a lasso type objects).

Once the deer is caught, they can untie it and a group of men pick it up and bring it to a mat with a small pillow like thing. 

Then a smaller group of men hold the deer down while the priest cuts the antlers off. 

Once they're cut off, the horns are offered to the god of Kasuga Taisho temple, and it finishes, and they release the deer and let it back out into the park.  While this is going on, there is another group of men hold up a large banner type object across the field probably to stop the other deer from interfering with the cutting process, and for safety as well

.

The process gets repeated for the other two deer as well.  The second deer was really energetic and almost kicked the man that was triying to tie him up.  The final deer got quite smart, and was able to evade the men for a good amount of time.  At one point it just stopped in front of the gate that went back to the park.  There were a lot of jokes about that, like the deer was like "I'm done." or "Can I go?"
Eventually they did catch him after he tired out a bit.  In fact, after his antlers were cut, it just got up and stood there for a minute, until one man encouraged it to move, and then it was also able to go back into the park.

You can check out a bit of video from this event here:

Tyler holding up the info pamphlet for me ;)

It has also been really nice because my friend is really excited about everything, it taking it all with wide open and sparkly and only has good things to say!! It hasn't even been 24h since he arrived and he's already said he wants to live here!! That and he also said he can't stop smiling and his face is starting to hurt, and it's an even better experience than he thought! Yay!!! It's so nice to show someone around who really enjoys and appreciates things!

More adventures soon!