Monkeying Around Kyoto

Yesterday morning we went to the Iwatayama Monkey Park in Arashiyama to feed the monkeys. What we didn’t expect was the steep hike up the hill to get there. It was quite a walk, especially with a backpack full of water. On our way up, we bumped into a friend from our hostel in Tokyo and we arranged to meet later to see some temples. Once we made it, we were led into the feed room where were the ones in cages and the monkeys were on the outside being fed. We bought peanuts so we could feed them and take lots of pictures. There were some babies which were super adorable. The adults weren’t as cute, or nice for that matter. Mike tried feeding the little baby and the mother swatted his hand so that she could grab the food instead. We didn’t like her so we went to others.

Once we were done with the peanut bag, we went outside to walk around the area. There were monkeys everywhere. We were standing on a mountain with the most beautiful view of Kyoto, completely surrounded. While taking many pictures, I ran out of space on my memory card and had to take out a new one. As I was about to put the bag of SD cards away, my boss’s card reader (for the computer to read memory cards) that he lent me fell out and a monkey stole it and ran away with it. Once it realized that it wasn’t food, it put it down and we got it back (lucky for me!).

As we were leaving, we started seeing a bunch of monkeys crowding together and making lots of noise. When we turned around to look what was going on, we saw the caretakers carrying buckets of food. One of them turned on music *the can can* while the feeding was happening that it looked like a circus. Some of them were fighting and pushing each other out of the way. It was pretty hilarious. When we left, we met up with our friend, grabbed some lunch, and then went to a temple and walked through the gardens. It was a very relaxing afternoon.

For dinner, we met up with our Australian friends from the hostel in Tokyo and looked for a restaurant that is known for its pork cutlets, but failed because we did not have a name, just what was for dinner. After walking around and asking policemen where the restaurant might be, we gave up and settled for another place which happened to be excellent. It was one of those places where you take your shoes off and sit lower to the ground on a bench. Both food and company were wonderful. We couldn’t just end our last night together with dinner. What’s the one thing everyone has to do in Japan (aside from eat sushi)? That’s right. Karaoke. I never thought I would sing in front of people while I was sober but it was a lot of fun. We rocked out to some John Mayer, Bon Jovi, and other artists. When you have a room full of people who can’t sing, these things tend to be hilarious, especially when we’re all singing badly at one time. It was a great way to spend our last night in Kyoto with our friends, but I don’t think I will put anyone through that torture again… unless I had a few drinks in me.

Today, we saw the famous gates south of Kyoto which were really cool. Companies buy these gates to commemorate good things that happen. All the gates were similar and after walking around for half an hour, we left and made our way to Osaka.