Nara from Osaka

The temple founded at Emperor Shomu's wish in the Nara period, below Mount Wakakusa. The Great Buddha inside is 14.98 metres tall; the hall around it has been rebuilt twice, keeping nearly its first height and depth. Each hall charges its own entry, cash only.

A World Heritage shrine beside Nara Park, its halls first built in 768; the main sanctuary is a National Treasure. Lanterns have been given to the shrine since the Heian period, and about 3,000 are lit on the evening of Setsubun and on 14 and 15 August. The grounds are free; the inner sanctuary is ¥700.

The teahouse inside the shrine, named after the tea sellers who carried their stalls on shoulder poles through the grounds in the late Edo period. Its manyo-gayu is rice porridge in white miso on Hokkaido kelp stock, made with Nara's Hinohikari rice and a topping that changes every month: ¥1,200.

Mochi made the way it is made in Kotochi, a village in Kamikitayama in the Yoshino hills: pounded fast and hard while the rice is hot, so it comes out soft but springy. The yomogi mochi, of Hiyokumochi rice and mugwort sent from one growing area, is ¥200, unchanged since the shop opened in 1992.

A free reconstruction of a Naramachi merchant house, narrow at the street and deep behind: the main house, a courtyard and a storehouse at the back. The lattice kept eyes out and, Jalan says, the deer too.

Plan B Closed on Mondays: walk straight on into Naramachi.

Nara's old town, spread over the former grounds of Gango-ji: townhouses from the Edo period to the early Showa years, many now small museums, restaurants and shops. Deer often walk the streets here too.

A wagashi maker in an Edo-period townhouse. In its tearoom the set to order is matcha with kuzu-yaki, a baked sweet of Yoshino kuzu, Tamba red-bean paste and beet sugar: ¥1,210. The shop sells warabi-mochi and other sweets boxed to take home. Kintetsu-Nara station is about fifteen minutes on foot, and the ordinary fare back to Osaka-Namba is ¥680.