Originally Posted by
abmj-jr
This is another of those "it depends" answers.
If you are really into history and walking through all the old temples and gardens, Nara could easily use a full day, particularly when you figure finding someplace for lunch and perhaps an hour or two in the museum. If you move faster and pick out only the major sites, you could finish up in less than a full day. The nice thing in that case is you can just hop back on the train to Kyoto and spend whatever is left of the day catching a few more sites there. The JR Nara Line trains run back and forth Kyoto-Nara-Kyoto (and other places) multiple times per hour.
Thanks and re-reading my post i'd post my feedback. For Nara, we had a full day (~1700-~1600+1) we went to a fest in the Nara Park in the evening (walked around the pond and saw the Kofukuji from outside), the next day we had a walk east of the National Museum early before breakie and then spent a good few hours walking around Todai-ji and Nigatsu-do. It must have been post-1400 when we're back in town. There must have been more to see if we had another day but we were tired then and had to go meet a friend in Osaka so we'd called it the day.
So, yes. you can do Nara in 24 hours- but we could barely finish the Nara Park. (Admittedly we spent a fair share of time dealing with deers)