Nara on April 24 or 23?

Hello,

We'll be staying in Osaka on 4/23 & 24.
We want to make a day trip to Nara for its 1300th Anniversary Celebration.

Will it be hard to get around Nara on Saturday, 4/24, do you know?
I'm just worried if we might not even get the train tickets to go to Nara from Osaka. We will have the JR Pass.

Or should we go to Nara on Fri., 4/23, instead? But then, we will miss the 1300th Anniversary celebration, won't we?

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

On the 24th, the first day of the main venue of the anniversary celebrations, I imagine the main venue (Heian Imperial Palace) to be very crowded, but I also imagine that the rest of the city is more or less as usual.

If this is your first time to Nara and you have only one day allocated to the city, I think you should not give the special events of the anniversary too much priority and just visit the regular main attractions of Nara, such as Todaiji and Nara Park. Only if you have been in Nara before or have multiple days allocated to the city, would I try to arrange your schedule in a way so that you can see the events.

So as for crowds, Friday is probably going to be less crowded than Saturday, although you never know. The regular sites might be quite calm on Saturday, because everybody is at the anniversary events at Heian Palace. It is difficult to predict.

And last but not least, Nara has a lot of open spaces and can absorb large crowds relatively easily. Even if it gets very crowded, that would not have much of a negative impact on a visit, in my opinion, especially if you choose to explore the city entirely on foot.