Monkeys, the "Best View in Kyoto," and (almost) every type of food/Macacos, o "melhor vista de Kyoto", e (quase) todo o tipo de comida

Joel and I have definitely been keeping busy here. Despite ping-ponging illnesses (first Joel had bronchitis, then I caught a nasty cold, and now that I am recovering it seems like he has picked up said cold from me), we are out and about for most of the day, pretty much every day. We like to walk as much as possible to save money on train fare, so unless our chosen target is on the other side of town, sometimes we will walk twenty or thirty minutes to get there. It's quite nice actually, despite the cold; we can take in the sights along the way, stop into any random little shrines we happen to pass, and try different kinds of street food. When you are on holiday, every day is Saturday, so there's never really any hurry.

Last week we went on two tours of different imperial holdings: one of the Shugaku-in villa on Wednesday and the inner palace on Friday. We have two more tours scheduled for this week also - the Katsura villa on Wednesday and the Sentou palace on Friday. These places are free to visit, but only if you make a reservation for a guided tour (you can't just wander around by yourself). They aren't all that spectacular visually but are still interesting if you like the historical aspect (which Joel is a big fan of). Plus, when you're just bumming around town for a month, why not?

Saturday was kind of disappointing. The weather forecast said it was supposed to snow through the night, and Kinkaku-ji (the famous Golden Pavilion) is said to look its finest under a cover of fresh snow, so we tentatively planned to make the trek up there in the morning. Alas, we woke up Saturday morning to the sound of rain, which meant no snow and no walking, so we did laundry instead. After wandering around town for a bit, we went to a sento (a public bathhouse or - for those of you still in Korea - a jjimjilbang) in the evening to get the chill out of our bones.

Did I mention that the house we are staying in is bloody cold? There is no central heat and no windows, and we have a single gas-powered space heater in our room. You can see your breath in the house.

Anyway, the true adventures finally found us yesterday. After Mass, we headed over to Arashiyama (a quaint, touristy district on the west side of the city) to eat lunch and visit the monkey park. The region is known for its tofu (among other things), so we picked a restaurant at random and ordered two meals off of their Japanese-only menu, also at random. Lunch was a delicious assortment of various tofus excellently prepared in eight different ways.

There is a species of macaque, commonly known as the "snow monkey," that is native to Japan. There is a pretty large group of them that live near the city, so they advertise a "Monkey Park" that people can visit to see and feed the monkeys. The "park" is really just a hiking trail that goes up the mountain and ends at a clearing with a pond and a tin-roofed shack with grates on the windows. Despite its simplicity, it was probably my favorite part of the trip so far. Unlike Joel, who got to see (and have his food stolen by) vervet monkeys and baboons while living in Zimbabwe, I have never experienced wildlife up close, other than raccoons at my father's old place in the woods and the occasional deer. I felt like a toddler who was visiting a zoo and seeing wild animals for the first time in my life. The monkeys are, quite literally, right there and everywhere.

The monkeys are used to people and comfortable with many visitors, so you can just walk right up to one and watch it eat dirt or groom its neighbor from a foot away. As we walked up the path, they ran in front of and behind us as they chased each other, jumped over our heads in the trees, or just lounged right by the path and ignored us as we walked by. I must have uttered some variant of "Dude, the monkey is, like, right there!" at least ten times while Joel just laughed at my childlike amazement.

To clarify, the shack with the grates on the windows isn't for the monkeys - it's for us. People love to feed the monkeys, but they are so used to people that they will jump all over you if you have food, so the park management only lets you feed them fruit and nuts from inside. Naturally, the monkeys have figured out how to work this system quite well - they take turns hanging on the grate with their arms threaded through the bars, palm up, in a calm but nonetheless demanding "Feed me, damn it" sort of gesture.

Here is a short video of Joel and I feeding the monkeys:

We were also lucky enough to see a "feeding demonstration" done by park staff. It is kind of a gimmick - they play some really bombastic classical music as they dish out the food - but I enjoyed it despite its tourist-oriented nature:

Afterwards, we headed back down the hill and along the river to Senkou-ji, a temple that advertised having the "best view in Kyoto." The uphill path offered a series of very interesting (and kind of hippie-ish) signs and messages.

The temple itself was no less unusual. Aside from the typical assortment of old relics and statues, it sported several rainbow-colored flags and a collection of very temporary-looking huts and shelters where things were piled haphazardly. The main structure, built on wooden stilts, indeed offered a fantastic view of the city. We shared the room with another Japanese couple and a woman who was working on an arrangement of plum branches. The temple monk was attempting to train two dogs busy barking at each other outside. Frankly, the place was kind of a dump, but intriguing nonetheless.

After a session of experimenting with my phone camera's macro-focus function (and running down the battery in the process), we wandered back into town. Feeling munchy and kind of inspired, Joel and I proceeded to sample the different street foods, including fried chicken, croquettes, deep-fried fish paste with cheese, and green tea mochi balls filled with red bean paste. We caught a train jam-packed with tourists back into the city, where we had the weirdest Chinese food I have ever tried. Finally, we finished the night with two small burgers from Mos Burger.

All in all, not a bad day.