On Thursday we visited the Arashiyama area in western Kyoto. We hired some bikes and cruised over to the river then hiked up to the Monkey Park. Japan has just one species of monkey – the Japanese Macaque. The walk up was quite a steep 20 minute walk through the forest. The top opened up to a flat area with monkeys just sitting around, being pretty chill really. We fed some of the greedy little buggers from inside a caged hut. They were actually quite gentle the way they took the food out of your hand. Outside they just wander around, groom each other and pretty much ignore all the people, they are so used to the tourists as the park has been there since the 50s.
Back down the hill, back on the bikes. We cruised through the very busy main street and stopped for lunch. We also had some green tea and roasted tea ice cream, yum. A big attraction in the area is the bamboo forest. It was lovely to bike through that and around the residential streets in the area.
We really wondered why we didn’t hire bikes sooner!!