Golden Temple and Monkey Mountain

This morning we visited Kinkakuji Shrine. It is known as the Golden Temple. It was a demonstration of what you can do if you have a spare building and 20,000 sheets of gold foil. We basically walked through the grounds and snapped pictures of anything interesting. Unfortunately, you were not allowed into the Golden Temple. Instead, they just have a picture of the inside hanging on a pole. After our quick walk-through we heading off to the monkey park.

Golden Temple

Waterfall near Golden Temple

Golden Temple Picture of Inside

The Monkey Park (aka Iwatayama Park) is home to 170 snow monkeys. To get to the park, we have to hike to the top of hill in the forest. Before heading out there, Carolyn kept on reading the warnings to us.

• Don’t look the monkeys in the eyes
• Don’t feed the monkeys
• Don’t bend over (Carolyn keep wondering what would happen)

By the time we reached the park, a thorough sense of monkey paranoia had set in. Following the path up, we came across a monkey sitting in the middle of the path. Carolyn cautioned us to not look at him. We decided to take an alternative path. As we started down the alternate path, the monkey walked over to block that route. Having run out of options, we waited for some Japanese tourists to walk past the monkey to see if it was safe. After the monkey let them by unmolested, we decided to take our chances walking past the monkey being careful not to look at him.

Much to our horror, the monkey decided to follow us up the path. A second monkey heading down the path grunted at us putting us further on edge. At the top of the hill sat a hut enclosed with metal chainlinks. Hanging along the outside of the building were dozens of monkeys. We were ushered into the hut by the attendants. Inside were several tourists feeding the monkeys through holes in the chainlink mesh. After watching a tourist feed a monkey, we decided to give it a try. We each bought a bag of food. We had apples, peanuts, and nuts to feed them.

The monkeys would hang from the sides of the building and stick their hands through the mesh waiting for food. You could either hand them the food or have them take it from the palm of your hand. The older monkeys were more aggressive and would kind of scratch your hand with their nails as they snatched the food from your hand. The younger monkeys tend to be very gentle taking the food. Like a bunch of kids, you had to share the food with everyone. If one monkey felt he wasn’t getting enough food, he would yell to let you know his displeasure. On the other hand, you could keep on giving the same monkey food and he would put it in his mouth and hold out his hand for another piece of food. One monkey was holding three nuts into his cheeks and was waiting for me to give him a fourth.

After feeding the monkeys 6 bags of food, we headed outside to see the monkeys play in a nearby pond. By the pool, there were several monkeys hanging near the edge picking at the plants and eating the odd scraps. Usually the monkeys would always keep at least two paws on solid ground while fishing around in the pool. However, there was the occasional monkey that would get into the pond and swim around. Whenever a swimming monkey would come near the edge, another monkey would come and pull him out. At first, it looked like the monkey on land was trying to drown the swimming monkey, but later we realized that he was pulling him out.

After hanging out in the monkey park for an hour, we headed down the hill to take a bus back to our hotel. Laura and I took the slide shortcut down the hill.

Shortcut down the slide

Tomorrow, we head back to Tokyo.

River near Monkey Park

Warning Sign for Monkeys

Outside Monkey Hut

From inside hut

Brian feeding monkeys

Mother Monkey with baby

Swimming Monkeys

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Posing with a monkey

View from Monkey Hill. (Our hotel is next to the tower in distance)

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