Parcly Taxel: Both the Canterlot pageant on the founding of Equestria and our distinctively Japanese dinner in a secluded corner of Osaka, on Hearth’s Warming Eve, were pretty big things. However, on Hearth’s Warming itself we were going to do something more, a day trip to Nara (奈良) in the outer Keihanshin.

Spindle: Just like with Seoul and Pyeongchang, Nara is considered as a faraway recreational town by the inhabitants of Osaka. With Pyeongchang the distance was literally the width of South Korea (~180 km), two full hours on a canter on icy roads with hypnotic suggestion. With Nara the spatial distance was much shorter (~50 km) and the problem lay more in transport options: the fastest route there was one hour via the private Kintetsu (近鉄) while JR’s route was longer. Inside Nara, things were much worse.

Parcly: Such oddities that arose out of the post-war track-laying boom, but I would take them by the horns. Getting to the Kintetsu lines required riding the Loop to Tsuruhashi (鶴橋) first, five stops from Sakuranojima. What seemed to be an exit showed itself at platform level; when I put my ticket in it was rejected.

That was not an exit at all, only a transfer to JR’s Nara Line. The actual exits were two levels below, where I bought the continuing Kintetsu tickets.

Spindle: As this second train approached Nara, our elevation increased until the sprawling Keihanshin radiated from Osaka Bay in shining grey, the boundaries between cities and towns lost under the skyline. It disppeared behind a hill, leaving the low-lying houses and flats characteristic of gentrification around us, some overrun by vines, others flaking off plaster and the remainder staying very still. Only isolated bunches of ponies proved these were not ghost towns we were passing through, though I admit I’d be excited to meet and communicate with the spirits of other species.

Parcly: A light chill breezed past my face when I exited the station. Two deer, one clearly a buck with his short antlers and one a doe, were standing nearby chatting away, but scurried off to the local park after noticing me. Most of Nara’s population is in fact deer, so I wasn’t surprised at all… until one minute later.

Hiyaka: I was at that exit with my brother Namaka – and she didn’t recognise me. Cries of “a-li-corn! a-li-corn!” went around, the deer astounded at seeing such a majestic pony arrive. Once Parcly entered the park proper, the herd nuzzled her with their black noses and rubbed their coats on hers, enjoying the silky blue hairs the latter sported. She tried to sweep them away with her wings and give them flour crackers for appeasement, but these only allowed the cloven-hooved fans to reach further in.

When they tickled her belly, Parcly finally broke up in laughter, rolling on the soft earth as the deer’s positions dictated. Later, Namaka and I followed her to Tōdai-ji (東大寺), part of Nara’s own World Heritage Site system, the fourth visited in this trip so far.

Spindle: Before Kyoto was the capital of Japan, Nara was, though attesting structures have met a less favourable fate against time than Kyoto’s. This temple alone has been burned down twice, shaken by earthquakes and ravaged by typhoons, costing much of its original splendour. For example, the current main hall is 30% narrower than the original, while a sōrin (相輪) is all that is left of two hundred-metre-high pagodas.

Yet equally immense sculptures are still resident inside, including the Vairocana/Daibutsu (大仏) centrepiece, the world’s largest bronze statue of its kind at fifteen metres in height. I threw a coin and made a wish before continuing on the circle around the statue, along which were presented a history and reconstructions of the original structures.

Namaka: Why are we so common here? It is said that a brilliant white deer descended from heaven to protect the capital Heijō Palace (平城宮) near Nara. Since then, we have come to view ourselves as protectors of the city, roaming the streets and fields without restraint. The aforementioned palace, Tōdai and six other places form the Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara, the actual complex inscribed as World Heritage.

Parcly: I went up an incline for my lunch of tempura udon. On my way down through Nara Park, I passed by one of those other inscribed places, Kasuga-taisha (春日大社), which appeared to be closed for the day. Resupply trucks were on the scene, having used the smooth borders of staircases to get up, and I watched as two such trucks got down onto the main road. A very bumpy dozen seconds.

Namaka: All along, we brushed with deer of myriad sizes, fur colours and patterns (note that we are sika deer, Cervus nippon, so the last property is a bit hard to distinguish). Scenery isn’t lacking either, the winding transverse paths covered with expansive swathes of grassland, dotted by trees revealing mountains beyond their empty branches, animated by refreshing streams and ponds.

Hiyaka: While the four of us strolled or floated down the elevation gradient, I threw a few questions at my new friend Parcly, one of which was the etymology of baka (馬鹿). I did not know the answer, only that the two characters signified the two species we were, pony and deer.

Parcly: So I related to Hiyaka this story from Mistmane’s era: a deer general serving in the imperial court walked into the throne room, calling himself a pony. The sitting emperor then challenged other subjects in the room about the general’s species; those who told the truth, saying he was a deer, were put on trial. Thus the Chinese idiom 指鹿为马 (deception via misrepresentation), which was borrowed into Japanese.

Hiyaka: When she finished, we decided to go baka ourselves, tickling each other with our muzzles or hooves in public view for a full half-hour. Eventually Parcly’s thinner coat begged to stop, by which time we were closer to JR’s Nara than Kintetsu’s. I waved goodbye with my brother to her, the train pulling away towards central Osaka.