Day 35 – THE DEER & Valentines Day – The Great Dopamine Rush of 2025

Well Today started with a buzz of excitement, as it was Valentines day and we are in Japan. How romantic. Also we planned a day trip to Nara, which is about an hour train away, to go see the famous sacred Sika deer of Nara park.

We went for a western fusion breakfast down the street from the hotel called Kacto. It was so surprisingly amazing. I had salmon avocado toast with mascarpone cheese and hash browns with bacon. Hans had pancakes with bacon, sausage, and eggs. We devoured it.

We Boarded the train after breakfast, and headed to Nara. Now we had no real idea of what we were in store for, when it comes to the deer. My expectation was a couple deer that bowed for food. Well how wrong I was, there was hundreds of them, just chilling and milling around. They were incredible, they would approach you and bow hoping to get a snack.

We purchased some deer crackers from a little Japanese lady at the entrance to the park, and trotted off to go feed some deer. Hannah & I had a gay ole time, I don’t think either of us expected to have as much fun as we did. Those deer were awesome, and slightly aggressive if you showed fear when feeding them. They knew we had snacks and they didn’t have any reservations about nipping or head butting you to get them. Both of us got bit a few times and I think Hannah’s ass might be a little sore from getting headbutted. They were gentle enough that all you had to do was steer their heads away when they were getting pushy.

Every deer we passed would bow to us. I cant speak for Hannah, but I think it is the highlight of my trip so far. We reloaded on deer crackers several times. After a while of walking we went and sat on a bench in the park, and a very nice doe came up to us. We affectionately named her Deerdra, She posed for many pictures with us. We may or may have given her special treatment in the form of an entire pack of deer crackers.

After walking a few kilometers through the park we worked up an appetite and went to a little Conveyor belt sushi called Kaiten Sushi Totogin, spot to gorge on nigiri. It was really good. I’m not super into buffets and stuff like that because I have a tendency to over eat, this was no different. It just kept coming and coming and coming. After both Hannah and I had our fill and some we jumped back on the train and headed back to Kyoto.

We were pretty spent after Nara and went and chilled for a bit before going out for a Valentines dinner at an Italian Japanese fusion spot. We had a 5 course set menu it was delicious, the portions were more than we were expecting and we both left so full I think we almost needed to roll home.