On the day our daughter had her concert, she was busy with friends and fellow concert-goers the whole day so my wife and I didn’t see her at all. Instead, we made our own plans.

My wife is fascinated by monkeys, as evidenced by our visit to not one, but two, monkey parks in Bali last year. There’s a monkey park west of Kyoto in an area called Arashiyama, which is more famous for its Instagram-worthy bamboo forest. As we only had two days upcoming in Kyoto, I thought it made sense to visit this area from Osaka on a quick day trip while we had a free day.

After an early breakfast at the Conrad, we took a taxi to Osaka-Umeda Station, which is close to Osaka Station, but has a different, private railway, the Hankyu line, running to Kyoto. This train was not included in our JR Rail Pass, but the whole trip cost about $4. We took the train to Saiin Station, just west of Kyoto Station. There we switched to the Randen, Kyoto’s historic tram, which runs overground between Kyoto Station and Arashiyama.

The Randen dropped us at Arashiyama station, which is the closest to the monkey park. My goal was to limit my wife’s walking on the journey as there would be a bunch of walking at the monkey park.

We walked over the bridge to the monkey park just before 9am when it opened.

The monkey park entrance is sort of hidden up some stairs.

We waited in a short line for the park to open, paid our admission fee in cash and began the trek up the hill to see the monkeys.

My wife managed to get up to the top, where the monkeys were hanging out. There’s no cages or restrictions on the monkeys, but they live there in family groups and get fed regularly.

At the top, there’s a small building with wire mesh walls. You go inside, buy a small bag of food and feed the monkeys through the wire mesh so they are outside the cage and you are inside.

We took a few more pictures outside the building as the monkeys gathered around for their daily feeding. There were some nice views back to Kyoto as well.

We made the trek back down the hill around 10am and walked back across the bridge into the Arashiyama area.

There were lots of little stores and restaurants and the tourist crowds were starting to build up. My wife agreed to walk to the Saga-Arashiyama station where we could pick up the JR train and go back via Kyoto Station as that was a bit quicker. On the way, we stopped at 7-11 for some refreshment. I made myself a smoothie using their machine.

It was really hot and neither of us was up for going to the bamboo forest. We’ve been to an amazing bamboo forest in Maui before so it wasn’t a big deal for us. We took the train back to Osaka and took a break at the hotel to get out of the heat. Later that day we went shopping again and then to the omakase restaurant for dinner.

We had a great time feeding the monkeys and seeing the views from the monkey park. If you can’t squeeze Arashiyama into your Kyoto stay, you can always get there on a day trip from Osaka.

Up Next: Half Day Trip to Nara

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