This photo caught our monkey friend with his mouth open, since he was yelling something about expecting a really big banana for having to pose with these two idiots.
Now, anyone who knows me is certainly aware of my affinity for all things simian. Everything is better when you add monkeys, right? So imagine my surprise and delight when, upon exiting the train at Arashiyama station just outside Kyoto, I spot a large, colorful advertisement for the “Arashiyama Monkey Park”, adorned with cartoon drawings of various cherubic monkeys obviously enjoying themselves and beckoning me to join them. The ensuing conversation with my wife went something like this:
“Where should we go for lunch? How about that zaru-soba place?”
“Monkey park.”
“We’ll see that if we have time after the other stuff. Should we go to the shrine first?”
“Monkey park.”
[Various threats and admonishments in Japanese]
“Mon-kii-paa-ku!”
“Hai, hai.”
“Monkey park!”
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Most machiya, including that housing the Nunoya ryokan, include a nice enclosed garden.
Finally managing to get out of Saijo for a few days of travel before returning stateside, we spent a few days in the old Japanese capital of Kyoto. We split our stay between a fairly expensive (for our budget) traditional ryokan, and a very inexpensive (by Japan standards) guest house. I’d expected a pretty wide gap in terms of quality of service and accommodations between the two, so I was very pleasantly surprised when the latter very nearly matched the former in terms of overall quality of experience.
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