All of the lucky engineering kids had to go into school today for a lab. Thankfully it was just the first lab and it was relatively simple so we got out of class early. Hooray!
One of the other kids in the program got a group together to visit Arashiyama. So after lab and I met up with our group (about 15) and headed to the cafeteria for lunch. Everything was going fine and dandy, until we realized, that no one really knew how to actually get to Arashiyama. Suggestions were flying, we should take the bus, we should take the train, we should bike. In the end the group split into two and one group caught the train and the other biked.
I opted for the train group, as I don't have a bike here. Amazingly, we reached Arashiyama at the same time the biker gang rolled up. So we rounded our troops and took a stroll along a gorgeous bridge that had gave a beautiful view of the mountain, sakura and the town. After that stroll, we ended up at the base of monkey mountain. I have no idea what it's actually called because everyone was calling it monkey mountain, which is an accurate description.
The signs were hilarious, by the way.
The entrance fee for monkey mountain, however was 550 yen, which in student terms means one meal. So our group was divided again. Despite my Pake blood, I opted for the trek up monkey mountain. It took us about 20 minutes to get to the top and the view from the observation deck was amazing and worth the 550 yen, itself. The monkeys were also pretty fun to watch, we weren't allowed to get near them (honestly you wouldn't want to they can be kind of scary) but we took lots of pictures.
The walk down was almost as rewarding as the walk up, there was a huge slide. Like a two story high slide. Fun. Fun. Fun. But during the walk down our monkey mountain group got split in two. My group had forded on while the other group was no where to be found. We waited for about 20 minutes before deciding that the other group was probably kidnapped by the monkeys and that there was nothing we could do for them. We then made our way to this crazy bamboo forest grove. So pretty.
Funny thing is, after walking around the bamboo forest for a bit, we ran into the first group that declined to climb monkey mountain and eventually the other monkey mountain climbers found our large group and we made our way for the train station. Along the way there were a bunch of vendors selling ice cream. Delicious soft serve ice cream. I got a cone with four flavors. Four! Vanilla on the bottom, then green tea, then some other tea (houji I think), and sakura on top. Yummmmmm. Pretty much the highlight of my day.
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