lost or what?

I got up early, and was rewarded with great light for this photo which was taken right by my hotel.

That is actually a rock climbing wall, and for whatever reason it appears as though they can hoist it up higher on the outside of this building.
Either that or they are going to build more onto it.

It was at this point I got off to back track having realised I was heading off into rural areas unexpectedly.
However, I was able to take this photo whilst waiting for a train in the opposite direction. The light today was pollution twilight all day.

After my brief detour, I was at JR Nara station, and I could taste smoke in the air. I checked the air quality index and it was about 200! Hazardous to health!
I blame farmers burning crops.

Before I headed up the hill, I headed down the hill, google maps showed a big green area with castle ruins. It was not green at all! It appears as though its about to be a huge housing development.
There were lines of people registering to buy blocks of land.

This huge open field is for now, the castle ruins, theres nothing to see here really. But theres lots of people and a couple of different fairs going on.

Right in the middle is this 'attraction'. Not your best work Japan. This whole area reminded me of something you might see in a Chinese city no ones heard of - huge, lots of people for no apparent reason, dusty.

And of course, a full band playing in the dusty middle of the wasteland with no shade and an amazingly high quality public address system. Quite bizarre.

Time to head back up the hill, I passed this car with a lot of distracting woolen animals blocking the drivers view. You see this often, but I believe these ones are all home made, so I rewarded her efforts with a photo. I am going to presume its a her.

In the suburbs of Nara I passed this huge shopping mall, no time for lunch today, I kept going. Nara is much bigger than I realised though.

Now I am back in deer town. Here is the pagoda. The number of tourists was pretty overwhelming.

More fairs, selling corvettes.

Deer everywhere. Everyone does deer pics, I remained somewhat restrained.

There really were a huge number of people. It was never uncomfortably busy, just surprisingly so.

Deer wedding pics.

Ahhhh, color. Everyone gasp.

When the deer have eaten enough, they dig themselves a mud pit and go to sleep.

Nearby you can pay to climb up this grassy hill and sit in the blazing sun. Or you can climb up over some rocks and photograph this rubbish bin!

TRAGEDY, thwarted again. Me and lots of other people expressed our disgust, path closed. I bet it was perfectly fine to climb over the fallen tree.
I couldnt just go and find out, a small man had been tasked with keeping me out. He had a radio in his ear like an FBI agent to call the special hiking trail police if I attempted to pass.

Instead I had to cut back through the plethora of temples. I didnt take many photos here, because I have before on my last visit, and I was in a hurry to find a path to hike up.

I found a path. This one also had a man, who spoke no English, but took me to the map board to explain where I could get to along this path.
He was very helpful.
A short way up and this tree was coated in plastic. I think its to stop people climbing it for photos.

This is part of the primordial forest, where logging and hunting has been banned for over 800 years. Looked like any other forest to me, with a better quality path.

Evetually I got to what I guess was the top, and had this lake all to myself! About half a kilometre before here the two paths I could use today merged, and thats where everyone else stopped and went back.
Surely the lake is the attraction?

The waters are brown looking, but big fish seemed to be flopping about in the water.

Some more pollution twilight.

I walked a full lap of the lake. Because the full looping trail was closed I would not get a view of Nara below today.
However it would have been very hazey anyway, so perhaps the lake is a better reward for my extended hiking efforts.

Stance. SHORTS TODAY! It was 23 degrees. I am standing on what I believe was an ancient dam, somewhere up here theres temple ruins but you cant go and see them its completely reabsorbed by primordial forest.

OK, selfie as well.

The path down was an ancient stone trail. The lighting was great for a lot of the time.

The path was however mossy and very very slippery at times. I ran where I could but often had to be careful.

Once back down I was in time for golden hour! And it was pretty great. I was kind of glad I had been delayed a couple of times.

Color turned down! Almost a matte effect on this photo.

Starting to get dark, everyone was oohing and ahhing.

And then I just had to descend down this street back to JR Nara station, through hordes of tourists, many of whom were watching guys beat rice flour with giant wooden hammers.
Now I need to go get dinner immediately! I barely ate all day again. So this long post is probably typo riddled.