Today, we went back to Kyoto. It was only a 40 min drive from the old man’s house. We wanted to check out the main attractions in Kyoto that we had not seen before, like the famous bamboo forest, the temples, and the Imperial palace. Gion district was near the temples in Kyoto, and this part was famous for their abundance of geishas. This day did not go according to plan. I don’t even really want to write about it so my memories of this day can just fade into nothing faster.
Anyway. First stop: Arashiyama Bamboo Forest. In this part of Kyoto, you can enter the bamboo forest from the main street, a road lined with one-story wooden shops and hordes of pedestrians weaving between cars and buildings. We found a place to park and started walking to the forest. The bamboo is dense here, but the path is so wide due to the pedestrians that I didn’t feel like I was in a forest. Most of the path was filled with tourists taking pictures and it’s necessary to carefully maneuver through all the photo ops that you’ll encounter in the first few minutes of the walk.
There are also private residences in the bamboo forest, and one area had a very crowded graveyard as well. The bamboo forest didn’t really impress me that much. It didn’t take very long to walk through, either.
Then we got out of the bamboo forest and walked through the park connected to the forest. The park bordered on a beautiful river, and we continued strolling down the riverbank. We crossed the bridge and saw that there was a monkey forest on the other side of the river.
The entrance to monkey mountain was a small shack where you could buy a ticket and gain entry to the park. When we got in, it was about a 20 minute walk up and an estimated 15 minute walk down. Along the path, which got a little steep and slippery (due to rain), we saw informational and safety signs about best practices for meeting the monkeys.
The climb up the mountain also had some of the gnarliest trees I’ve ever seen.
When we got near the top, we could already see a few monkeys hanging out on flat parts of the hill. We saw this mom monkey and her baby in the middle of a grooming session. The mom put her hand on her baby’s face but it didn’t seem to mind at all.
We also saw a children’s playground, but it looked like something the monkeys would enjoy playing on as well. We saw a large male monkey just sitting by himself on one of the hills. When we passed by him, he ran across our feet and up the hill, into the main part of the monkey park!
Main plateau of the monkey park: To the left, a sweeping view of Kyoto. To the right, a gift shop, feeding hut, and employee bicycle parking. People stood and took pictures while monkeys ran through their legs.
The monkeys also had a small pond they could drink out of and bathe in. Many of the smaller monkeys loved chasing each other on the rocks around this pool.
We climbed up the hill behind the pond and saw an incredible view of the valley. Baby monkeys thundered across the thin metal roof and clambered over each other to play.
An adorable mom and baby huddled on the plateau together as people walked around them. Many of the employees stood around, directing traffic and making sure everyone was safe, especially small children who were closer to the monkeys.
There was also an option to feed the monkeys through the fence. People handed them nuts and pieces of fruit, which the monkeys eagerly grabbed with their hands. Some of the monkeys resorted to being scavengers and sifted through whatever the first monkeys dropped.
As we were walking down the mountain again, it started drizzling. We saw a much longer line at the entrance, even though it was raining. We crossed the bridge again and joined the crowd of tourists on the main street.
Then we stopped in a matcha cafe to grab a snack. I had the matcha ice cream, and we also picked up a box of the #1 selling snack at the cafe: matcha warabi cake. I thought it would be a traditional cake but it turned out to be mochi, which is less fun for me.
We decided that since it was already noon, we would check out some of the temples near Gion, the geisha district of Kyoto. There were tons of temples all next to each other in this part of the city. We were a little worried about our hotel reservation at this point because in the Chase Travel confirmation email, they said they’d email us with details on how to check in (lock box style I think), but they hadn’t yet. We decided to drive by in case there was an employee there. There wasn’t, so we called Chase a few times and decided to continue sightseeing while we waited for the check-in time. We had our fingers crossed that they’d email us at the time of check-in, if not before.
We saw this pretty temple, and this pretty pond at the foot of the mountain. It blows my mind how crowded Japan is, yet they still make sure that historic and natural sites are so well preserved. We grabbed a small bucket of chicken fingers at a nearby food stall. It started to rain, so we walked back to the car and sat in front of the “hotel” address.
I’ll spare you the details but the basic gist of what happened between 4 PM and 7 PM is that we were on the phone the whole time using international minutes calling an absolute dipshit of a Chase travel “supervisor” who first said that she’d relocate us, then after 2 hours on the line and listing all the relocation options, said that we had to email them and wait for them to respond. We were waiting in the rain while all this went down and all the phone lines to the Chase-sponsored “hotel” were dead, and this stupid hoe couldn’t understand why we didn’t want to email them and wait until the end of check-in time (11 PM) on New Year’s Eve for a response. Not to mention, she already gave us verbal confirmation that she would complete our request, and then went back on her word after 2 hours of calling.
We decided to peace out and book our own place in Osaka. We were so done with Kyoto, and I was done with Chase Reserve. I’m sure that if I had booked through American Express, our case would have been properly resolved within 30 minutes.
