This post is continued from yesterday’s Nara Park Deer know Postive Reinforcement too!
The deer at Nara Park have learnt from years of experience that if they bow to you, you will give them deer biscuits.
The practice of feeding the deer by tourists made the deer less shy to approach human visitors. The deer are not unlike dogs. If they smell the deer biscuit on you, they will start to trail after you in the hopes of being treated.
In fact, the deer keep their eyes peeled on the visitors in the area and will go to great lengths to follow them.
This deer struggled with crossing over the fence to get to the other side in pursuit of the lady running away.
The deer also mill around the street of shops facing the wooded areas. Deer biscuits can be bought along this street.
And when they’ve locked on their target, they can be persistent.
Besides the polite bowing, the deer have also learnt from past experience that the humans give up the biscuits when they are pursued. So these deer can be stubborn about following you about, going as far as to bite the human teasing them with the food.
It can get a little overwhelming for visitors because if there were a lot of deer around, they could swarm the visitor handing out the biscuits. And then the human surrenders the biscuit in order to distract them while they make their escape, not unlike this person in the picture.
So while the deer are positively reinforced to bow to the visitors for their biscuit, they have not been trained in any other way and are still wild animals that may hurt you.
But I suspect this happens more to people who deliberately tease them and get them riled up about the food. Mr P and I didn’t have much problems evading the more persistent ones, so it was a pretty interesting day for us, getting up close to the deer of Nara Park. :)
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Saturday Begging, it can be pretty cute and entertaining when it’s done to family who don’t mind, or in fact find it amusing. But it can also be downright embarrassing when your dog harasses a stranger who is pointedly ignoring her. Regardless of the human’s opinions, Donna did persist in testing every family member on their propensity to dispense food when they were here over CNY. 
Wednesday Donna was never a dog that loves the camera. She would always look away. A treat or two who have made her less sour, but too bad, the human was pretty happy with her grumpy face that day. :P I just liked the way she was resting with one arm on her bed.
Tuesday Week 2’s topic of HDR has got me excited, check out the 
Monday While on staycation at W Hotel, I had the leisure to try out Mr P’s Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and its panorama function. Here are 
Sunday Let me take you to the night I visited Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto. It was awfully dark and you can hardly see the people’s faces, but the temple buildings and surrounding trees were artfully lit. My camera is not great at night photography, but 
Friday So Valentine’s day has come and gone. Here’s a last look at the 
Spire detail of a five-storey pagoda at Kohfukuji Temple
Took my first bus ride this morning to visit some Zen gardens. The ride turned out more amusing than the gardens. The Japanese does it backwards from the way we do it in singapore. Instead of entering from the front of the bus, everyone goes up from the middle and they pay a flat fee of 220yen* when they are ready to get off from the front. The ride can never be lonely. Not even if there is only one commuter on the bus. The driver provides a constant audio track throughout the ride, letting you know when he is turning right, when he is stopping for the traffic light, when he is starting again. For a job that only requires you to drive from point a to point b, japanese bus drivers sure need more than a driving licence to give you the full service on board the bus!
Kyoto station is a gargantuan block of metal and concrete housing the JR, subway, various shopping belts and malls, outdoor performance space, theatre and even a hotel. Eating places are plentiful. Our bento set tonight came with a small bowl of soup with eel liver.
Kansai International Airport (KIX) is peach on the inside and mint and grey on the outside.
LAST WEEK’S ENTRIES: 
