Ryukyu Travels: Kyoto, Japan 8-11 October (Day 1)

Caroline and I headed to Kyoto for 4 days while bill went to Quantico, VA for a conference. MCCS hosted the tour.
This was the most amazing city that I have ever seen. Kyoto was the capital of Japan for centuries. It is still considered the "cultural capitol" of Japan. There are over 2000 shrines and temples there. Literally, we ran into a beautiful shrine, temple or torii gate every few blocks.
Our first day was a free day and I really wanted to go to Iwatayama Park, aka Monkey Park. It is up in the hills in the north west corner of Kyoto.
There are about 150 or so macaque monkeys that live free in the park. You can buy food to feed them at the top of the mountain.
We took a cab so we could get there quicker. We were expecting rain the next day so I didn't want to waste time learning the metro. I did that later.

Path to the mountain trail

There were quite a few monkeys swinging around on the path to the top.

We saw all kinds of monkeys in the trees on the trail to the top. This was exciting for us. We had no idea that we would see 50-60 more up top.

View from the trail.

We are at the top here.

Once we made it to the top, there was a conservatory there. The staff was really nice. We bought apple slices and nuts to feed the monkeys for about $1. We had to stand inside the fence and let the monkeys come to us. It can get aggressive sometimes. they get mad at you if you give them just one slice of apple and they want another. They literally start screaming at you.

The babies are so cute!!

The babies were playing right next to Caroline. Everyone there had that smile on their face. It was so fun!

You can see a beautiful view of Kyoto from the conservatory.

When you sit down, they come and sit right next to you. But don't look them in the eye. They see that as a sign of aggression. Our travel friend sat down where I was and looked at the monkey and within 1 second he started to get angry and lunge at her. The staff ran him off.