Beach

Sean and Tracy went to Maiko Beach this week with some friends.

 

Arashiyama

A couple weekends ago we had a friend from New York in town. He was in Tokyo for work and came down to see us for the weekend. It was good to catch up with him and we took the opportunity to try a few new things.

We went to dinner on Saturday night with some other friends. We tried a new cooking style called ishi-yaki. Its hot stone cooking. In the middle of the table there is a big rock with what I guess are some gas burners beneath it. The rock serves as the griddle that you Cook your food on. We had all kinds of great veggies, meat, and seafood. I think there was only one thing we didn't love - it looked like the bait from our childhood fishing trips. Tracy made a comment that she had to stop eating one of the whole fish after seeing its spine. That was enough for me. It was excellent food and an overall fun experience.

On Sunday we drove to a small town near Kyoto called Arashiyama. According to a travel guide "Arashiyama is a pleasant, touristy district at the outskirts of Kyoto. Its landmark is the wooden (now partially concrete) Togetsukyo Bridge with forested Mount Arashiyama as backdrop".

It was an awesome little town and a place we now have on our "must bring visitors list". We spent the day waling through the town and along the river and the surrounding hills. The river was full of boats (more like gondolas) and a couple guys fly fishing. It was a great peaceful little town.

This is the view from one of the overlooks from atop one of the surrounding mountains.

We visited a famous local temple called "Tenryuji Temple". It was built in 1339 and is a real old school Zen temple. It has a great garden and a bamboo forest on the grounds.

This is Tracy and Sean in front of the bamboo forest.

And of course, what would a weekend for us be without monkeys? High above the river there is a monkey park - Monkey Park Iwatayama. We decided to take a hike up to see it. It was quite a hall to get up there. I had Sean strapped in the backpack and Tracy is carrying the other Little one. It was a very hot and humid day, and a challenging hike. As you enter the park there are a lot of warning signs and the picture below is of my entrance ticket. We were half expecting monkeys with switch blades as we came in.

We stopped for a rest about 1/2 way up the mountain. Of course there was another warning sign. By this time we hadn't seen any monkeys yet but were nervously scanning the trees.

This picture is at the top of the mountain in the monkey park. You can see the city of Kyoto behind/underneath us. It was an awesome view. One of the park employees was taking our picture. He asked if we wanted a monkey in it, and we said yes. He gave a monkey some kind of treat and he came running over. We all kind of laughed, then he said in a stern voice "DON'T LOOK AT THE MONKEY". So he we are nervously smiling for a picture hoping this monkey wasn't going to snap and attack one of us.