Tame deer in Nara Park. Emperor so-and-so decided it would be cool to have tame deer around the then-capitol city a thousand years ago, and here they still are. They represent animal spirits, messengers from the gods, something like that. I think I have a vague grasp on the animal spirit idea; my guess is that they're the faces put on voices we hear in our heads, sort of like the daemons in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

Anyway, "tame" barely begins to describe these animals. They came right up to us, let us pet them, some nuzzled our hands or poked at our rented mopeds, expecting to be fed.

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