Wild Monkey Chase

by Scott--One of our stops in Kyoto today was the so-called wild monkey park in the hills northwest of the city. We trudged up a hillside that had a great view of the city, to a spot where a small colony of Japanese snow monkeys live in the open. The setting wasn't quite as wild as I imagined it would be, but the monkeys aren't penned up. They roam around, fight, mothers pick nits off the young. There is a feeding spot where you can stick apple pieces or peanuts through a chicken-wire fence; Liv and Tor did this. I thought the whole thing was questionably worth getting there and then up the hill, but the kids liked it. We've seen several humorous sign translations in Japan, and it's kind of a cheap shot to make fun of them because Lord knows I've butchered their language, but the Monkey Park had a couple of them: "Monkey Park is not only monkey. It is bird and deer look for."
And at the top of the hill: "Let's look down at Kyoto. Do you see the known place?"
We started the day with a trip to a shrine called Fushimi Inari. You can probably google it (we'll try to post one) and get the image of hundreds of vermilion "torii" over a pathway up a hill. We saw and heard a Shinto priest chanting a ceremony, and watched as a few dozen devotees in some kind of ceremonial dress (and one New York Yankee baseball cap--we called him Hideki Matsui) hauled out a very heavy mini-shrine onto a large truck, to ready for moving to a festival. The grunting and groaning were impressive.

We've taken a few taxicabs in Kyoto. Their costume is impressive, kind of a cross between a naval captain and a Park Avenue doorman. They wear white gloves and black suits, and round, stiff-brimmed caps with some cheap gold brocade. We had a screw-up with one the day we arrived, but otherwise they've been crisply polite and efficient.