Amakashi-no-Oka Observatory

This guide to Amakashi-no-Oka Observatory in Nara opens with Soga Emishi and his son Iruka, who built a mansion here in the early 600s to survey every road and field in the Asuka valley, until Iruka's assassination in 645 ended the family's grip on Japan. It traces how that private lookout became a free public park, where cyclists from Asukadera Temple and picnicking families watch the light change over the three peaks poets once called the Yamato Sanzan. Try the Manyo Botanical Path loop, matching wooden flaps to the ancient poems naming each plant.