Mt. Wakakusa

During Golden Week, I went to Mt. Wakakusa in Nara together with a couple of friends. It was the first time I'd been to that part of Nara before. In the past, I had seen it from some gardens in Nara (It looks like a big green grassy hill), but I never went up there, so when my friends suggested going there, how could I not?

To get there you have to go behind the Kasuga Taisha shrine, and walk for a bit.

Just outside the entrance to Mt. Wakakusa

Once you get to the hill, there are two gates that you can go into, but you have to pay 150¥ to get in.  Interestingly when you get inside there was a sign that very clearly told you that it was against the rules to roll down the hill...they must have had problems with that? And also no playing on the playground. Who is it for then? I wish I had taken a picture of it.  Anyway...There are two paths you can choose to go up, the north or the south. I believe we went up the south side and came back down the north side. It's only 342m high, so it doesn't take too long to get up to the top.  Part way up, there is a small building where you can buy some snacks and drinks, and there are a couple benches where you can sit and look out at the view of Nara.  We spent some time there taking pictures and eating a bit.  There were only 2 deer in this area, probably because it was rather warm and there weren't many shaded areas for them.

Some views from the first stop

After that, we continued to walk up. Along the way, we saw a few more deer.

One of my friends kept taking pictures of me...

You can see the Todaiji Temple building here (where the giant Buddha is)

"What do you want? Do you have food for me?"

"Stop taking pictures and let me eat..."

In the uppermost area, there were some nice views again, as well as more deer than lower down (more trees and shade). One of my friends was kind of disappointed because he wanted pictures of the view with deer in it.  So I got some deer senbei (crackers for the deer) and tried to lead them to the area he wanted them in. At first it was kind of difficult but I eventually figured out it was easier to leave them pieces on the ground and then get out of the way so they could take their pictures.  It seemed to work alright, although before I figured that out, I got in the way of quite a few of their pictures.

At the top

After spending a bit more time up top, we headed back down for a more substantial late lunch before returning back to Kobe, where we ended up going bowling (I can't remember the last time I did that!) and went for dinner.  It was a good day, and so nice to spend time with those friends!

The way down