Iwatayama Monkey Park

One of the coolest animal encounters ever

If you're out sightseeing in the Arashiyama area of Kyoto (perhaps you're there checking out the famous bamboo forest), another place I would highly recommend a visit to is the Iwatayama Monkey Park. It's located at the top of Mt. Arashiyama, and the walk up the mountain will definitely have you sweating if you go in the summertime like I did. In saying that though, it was worth it. At the top of the mountain there are a large number of Japanese Macaque Monkeys calling the area home. You can pay a small amount (it was around 100 yen from memory) to buy some apple slices or peanuts to feed to the monkeys - you enter a small building which has a metal mesh wall that you can offer them snacks through. Obviously these are still wild animals, so they recommend not staring the monkeys directly in the eye or anything like that - as it can be seen as an act of aggression. The admission fee is only around 500 yen so it's a great inexpensive thing to do if you're in the area - and absolutely memorable!