Along the way we met the first of the famous Nara deer and I found myself, for some reason, humming a bastardised version of Tiny Tim’s minor hit (Tiptoe through the deer poop with me) as I watched an attendant sweeping up the aforesaid detritus while a group of teenage students tried to figure out the correct strategy for dealing with demands for more food from a particularly insistent deer.
Once inside the temple complex, we headed past the Octagonal Lantern towards the eighteenth-century Great Buddha Hall which, at 57 metres across, 50 metres back and almost 49 metres high, is the largest wooden structure in the world. Impressive figures, and all the more impressive when you learn the structure you see today is 33% smaller than the original eighth-century structure, rebuilt after it was destroyed by fires in 1180 and 1567.
Inside the building the fifteen-metre Buddha, which had almost bankrupted Japan’s economy by the time it was completed in 751 takes your breath away as it towers over you, surrounded by smaller statues of other Buddhist figures.
