Where to stay in Nara: the best areas and hotels

Nara Park is the reason you came. A great sweep of lawns and woodland on the eastern side of the city, it holds Todai-ji and its colossal bronze Buddha, the five-storey pagoda of Kofuku-ji, the lantern-lined paths to Kasuga Taisha, and well over a thousand deer who have learned to bow for crackers. Stay on its edge and you get all of it before breakfast.

The hotels here have character to match. The Nara Hotel, more than a century old, sits on a wooded hill inside the park, a ten-minute walk from its centre. Traditional ryokan are tucked beside the park and in the forest behind it, with tatami rooms, kaiseki dinners and gardens. There are simple guesthouses too, steps from the lawns. Evenings are very quiet; that is the appeal.

South of Sarusawa Pond, where the pagoda of Kofuku-ji is reflected on still days, the streets narrow into Naramachi. This was the merchants’ district, and its lattice-fronted wooden townhouses now hold craft shops, cafés, sake breweries and small museums. It is the most atmospheric part of the city to wander after dark, and Nara Park is only a few minutes’ walk away.

Places to stay are small and individual: a handful of rooms in a converted townhouse, a design hotel with a garden terrace, a modern inn by the pond. Couples and anyone who likes their hotels with a sense of place should start here. Light sleepers will be happy too. Naramachi goes to bed early.

Nara has two main stations. Kintetsu Nara is the closer of the two to the park, almost at its gate; JR Nara is further west, at the far end of the main shopping street, with the temples within a half-hour walk or a quick bus ride. Between and around them is the modern city: covered arcades, izakaya, convenience stores and a good supply of straightforward hotels.

This is where to look for value. Rooms are compact but spotless, several hotels have their own hot-spring or communal baths to soak in after a day on your feet, and one is connected directly to JR Nara station. It is also the smart base if you plan day trips, with direct trains to Kyoto and Osaka. It is not the pretty part of town, but everything pretty is close.

The western side of the Nara basin is for travellers who have seen the Great Buddha and want more. Nishinokyo has the temples of Yakushi-ji and Toshodai-ji; a little further on, in the small town of Ikaruga, Horyu-ji holds some of the oldest wooden buildings in the world. On the hills beyond, Mount Shigi has a mountain temple and traditional inns with hot baths.

Accommodation is thin on the ground and all the better for it: a small guesthouse near Yakushi-ji, a modern hotel in Ikaruga’s historic quarter a couple of minutes from Horyu-ji, a ryokan up on the mountain. You will want to be comfortable with local trains and buses, or have a car. In return you get temple precincts almost to yourself.

South of Nara city, Kashihara is a working town with deep roots. Kashihara Shrine stands in its wooded grounds at the foot of the hills, and next door is Asuka, a gentle landscape of rice terraces, stone monuments and burial mounds from the centuries before Nara was founded. It is best explored by hire bicycle, at no great speed.

Hotels are modern, well priced and close to the railway. One is a minute from Kashiharajingu-mae station and has its own onsen; another has a sauna; a third is a few minutes’ walk from Yamato-Yagi station. Stay here to see a side of the region most visitors miss, or as a staging post on the way to Yoshino.

Mount Yoshino is Japan’s most celebrated cherry-blossom spot: a long ridge in the south of the region, its slopes planted with thousands upon thousands of trees that flower in waves from the bottom to the top. A single village street runs along the crest, lined with temples, shrines, tofu shops and old inns, and the surrounding mountains are part of the Kii range’s sacred pilgrimage routes.

You come to Yoshino to stay in a ryokan. Expect tatami floors, futons, dinner served course by course and, in the best of them, a garden to gaze at from the bath. Blossom season is busy and books up early; the rest of the year the mountain is wonderfully still, with autumn colour its second act. It is a trip in its own right, not a commute from Nara city.