Todai-ji's Great Buddha Hall is routinely called the world's largest wooden building, and the version standing today is already a shrunken replacement of the original.
Smaller than it used to be
The current Daibutsuden, rebuilt in the Edo period after earlier structures were destroyed by fire, notably during twelfth century warfare and again in the sixteenth century, is narrower than the eighth century original, its rebuilders working with less timber and resources than the Nara state had commanded at the project's founding. Even reduced, it remains enormous by any premodern standard.
Guardians carved fast
The temple's Nandaimon gate houses two colossal wooden guardian statues, the Nio, attributed to master sculptors Unkei and Kaikei and their workshop, reportedly carved in an unusually short span of about two months in the early thirteenth century, an achievement often cited as evidence of the workshop's organised division of labour across multiple sculptors working simultaneously on different sections of each figure.
Deer that are not just scenery
The sika deer roaming Nara Park around the temple are treated locally as sacred messengers connected to the nearby Kasuga Shrine's tutelary deity, protected historically as divine animals rather than wildlife, a status that shaped centuries of local custom even though the deer population today is managed as a practical matter alongside its religious meaning.