Monday, January 5, 2009

Just Monkey Business..

For Katie's last day in town, we headed to Ray's and my favorite area of Kyoto, called Arashiyama.

It's a gorgeous part of town, sparsely populated, and has a beautiful river running through it.  We love to come here to watch the heron and cranes on the river.



But today, we had other business, monkey business.

At the top of the mountain there is a monkey park.  The monkeys aren't in cages- they kind of own the mountain, fence free. There is only one "cage" that humans can walk into if they want to feed the crazy beasts (monkeys get a bit aggressive when they're eating!!).  Needless to say, it was an awesome experience, unrivaled by any other monkey parks I've been to (ummm, that would be none).  My favorite part was watching them groom each other.  They would sit in twos and one monkey would comb through the other monkey's hair while he literally would begin falling asleep.  Hilarious!



Grooming time.






This is my favorite - HAHA!!  Sorry it's sideways....

2 comments:

Katie said...

I like the one of the pair of monkeys and the pair of Shafers grooming each other. So rare to find the Shafers in their natural habitat, with such uncommom behavior as this!

Rosalind Reichner said...

Oh My! Just how many peanuts can one monkey hold in his mouth? What that five you gave him, Ray? Love the photos!