As if seeing the red-faced, red-bummed, Japanese macaque monkeys near Kyoto wasn’t enough, we got to visit a separate troop of snow monkeys outside of Nakano, warming up in a hot spring pool. These snow monkeys live in the wild and come to the park because they know food is abundant there. The park staff provides food to support the monkeys’ diet, but they still forage in the surrounding forest and sleep in a new tree-top every night in their natural habitat. Visitors are not allowed to bring plastic bags into the park because the macaques have come to associate plastic bags with food and could attack a plastic bag if they hear or see one. Some of us are not so different from our long-lost cousins after all. Speaking of food, we had lunch (safely) just outside of the park at Sobaroku, which included a bowl of hot or cold soba noodles and an all-you-can eat tempura bar. We appropriately pronounced the name “soba rock-you”.
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