Today, we rented bikes from our Ryokan and headed over to Arashiyama on the western side of Kyoto. We saw a few temples and then hiked up a very steep trail to an area inhabited by monkeys! The type of monkey is the Macaque aka Snow Monkey. They walk around in the wild and if you want to feed them, you have to go into a building and hand fruit or peanuts to them through the window bars: the humans are in the cage and the monkeys are free outside! With the baby ones everywhere, Lisa was truly in heaven. After that, we walked around the area, ate lunch, walked through the Bamboo Forest and when Lisa’s new hat was blown into the water, set out on an expedition to find it with me fording the river. Unfortuanetly, the hat got waterlogged and sank so my bruises I got from slipping on stones were in vain. We met up with LA friends Mark and Emily later and went to see a weird play called NOH. It is a Japanese drama that has been performed since the 14th century based on stories from old literature, with a supernatural being transformed into a human. There was a lot of yelling involved and I was very confused the entire time. We got dinner after and when we were done, the garage where we had stored our bikes was locked! Fortunately, a businesswoman came by and was able to open it up for us. On our way back to the Ryokan, we found a store selling vintage kimonos… perfect gifts for some certain special someones back home!
