I visited this site for a half-day in the fall of 2023 from Kyoto. This visit was near the end of my trip to Japan, and both my friend and I were both feeling a little bit overwhelmed with the possibility of visiting another WHS composed of several locations. But after an invigorating visit to the Fushimi Inari shrine earlier that morning, during which I hiked to the top, we decided to go for it anyways since neither of us were too tired by that time. We got lunch at a local Nara-zushi restaurant, which was one of my culinary highlights of the trip because the sushi was so unique. The sushi was pressed into a block and wrapped up by some kind of leaf, and it was pretty sour (YUM!).

After our lunch break, we walked over to the Todai-ji temple. We encountered quite a few wandering deer on the way, but as it was the male deer rutting season, we both decided not to invest in the popular deer crackers. That turned out to be a good decision as we saw other travelers getting harassed by gangs of angry and potentially horny deer because they had the crackers. 

The buildings of Ancient Nara come from a period of history where Nara was the capital of Japan. Nara was the first capital of Japan hundreds of years before Kyoto, and the differences are visible even to an untrained eye. Unlike Kyoto, which is famous for Zen, Shingon, and Pure Land incarnations of Buddhism, Nara's temples come from the first efforts to spread the religion in Japan. These efforts were state-sponsored, and Todai-ji in particular was the center of Buddhism in Japan until schisms began to occur in later years. Although Nara is not as diverse as Kyoto in terms of architectural styles, it has some of the most interesting buildings in Japan. 

Todai-ji's exterior is massive. I was almost more impressed by the size of the building itself then the huge Buddha statue inside. It is incredible to realize that this incarnation of Todai-ji's worship hall is smaller than the original that burnt down centuries ago. The Buddha itself is also awe-worthy and I made several circles around the statue looking at all the details. 

We also walked to the Kasuga-Taisha shrine, which was nice with all of the lanterns. I enjoyed the woodland atmosphere and the mossy quality of the stone lanterns. 

Some of the other temples were under construction, so we didn't trouble with those. Luckily we were heading back to the train station when it started to rain heavily. Overall, I would recommend a full day in Nara to visit more of the temples and to potentially hit the other nearby WHS that I personally didn't have time for.