This morning we went to Arashiyama Monkey Park. We took a tiny 2 carriage street train to Arashiyama where we firstly sat by the river and ate our baked breakfast treats which included a festively snake shaped sweet bun, to celebrate the year of the snake.

After a quick 20mins hike up Mt. Iwatayama, we arrived at the main viewing area for the monkeys. We bought some treats to feed the monkeys. Their favourite treat was apple, followed by chestnuts and then peanuts. They are very intelligent and when one of us had a snack they preferred and they were offered the less preferable one they would bat it or throw it away until they got the one they wanted. Sneaky monkeys. They also would keep requesting snack after snack and stuff their mouths full of treats.

It happened to be feeding time when we were there and in true Japanese style, they made a real to-do of it. One monkey-keeper had a bucket full of treats and as they started to blurt out circus music from speakers he ran around throwing the treats to the ground for the chasing monkeys. He was the pied piper of monkeys! It was quite an outrageous display but very entertaining.

We descended the mountain and made our way by train and bus to a temple known as Kiyomizu Temple. It's situated up on a sloping hill so normally has a nice prospect over Kyoto city but unfortunately it was a bit smoggy today and also very, very crowded.

We made a slow descent to the bus stop where we spent a long time waiting for the bus and then a long time standing on a crowded bus. We are now back in the hostel relaxing until dinner time. We are going to head out to the nearby shopping arcade, grab some dinner and then hopefully do a bit of shopping. There seem to be a fair few sales on today so hopefully the crowds have died down and we can snap up some bargains.

This is our last night in Kyoto. Tomorrow we'll be making our way to Hiroshima.