I had a lot of fun on today's trip to Kyoto, although the start was a little less than auspicious. I nearly overslept and missed the bus out (I'd forgotten to turn my alarm clock on). For some reason, unlike my usual response to being in a moving vehicle, I felt no inclination to sleep, and spent the two hour ride looking out the window. I saw a lot of interesting scenery. Once the bus got out of Hikone we spent some time going through rural areas, which were all very picturesque, but still quite crowded. Although the building density was low, fields and rice paddies ran pretty much end to end. The bus stopped at Kameoka, which was a little short of our intended destination, and we took a tour train the rest of the way. The train followed the course of a river, showing us some spectacular mountainsides before depositing us at Arashiyama (home of several notable shrines, historic sites, and best of all, MONKEY MOUNTAIN!).

Monkey Mountain was the first stop we made, and here I was once again reminded that the Japanese seem inclined to be much more frank about that whole 'truth in advertising' thing, because it was a literal mountain. With the monkeys at the top. It wasn't a big mountain, but a half hour hike up the trails, in about ninety degree weather, while wearing my black jacket(tm), that was a lot of work. I said at about the halfway point, as I wrung out my handkerchief, "those had better be the best damned monkeys in the world."

Unfortunately, when we got to the top, I had to grudgingly admit, "Those monkeys are lucky. This time." It was pretty cool. There was a watch station, which sold peanuts and apple slices that we could feed to the monkeys. The monkeys themselves were well used to this, and would jump up onto the chain link over the windows, and stick their paws in to get a goody. Or you could just hang around outside and watch the monkeys run around. They were used to people, so you could get pretty close, but I'd recommend against using the viewers that let you look down from the mountain into Kyoto. I saw monkeys climb up on top of them and start licking the eyepieces.

Afterwards we wandered around Arashiyama for a while, and I refreshed myself with a delicious melon shaved ice (much like a snow cone, except that the syrup tastes better, and it doesn't fuse together into a solid mass so that you can eat the whole thing, instead of just sucking the syrup out and throwing the rest away).

We then went to the Kinkaku, a temple containing the famous golden pavilion. I found it pretty interesting. Take away the occasional fire extinguisher and the bamboo fences around the paths, and this was probably exactly how it had looked since it was originally built in fourteenth century. There was a great weight of age over the whole area that I found almost intimidating.

Afterwards we went to the Kiyomizu Temple (the stops were pretty short at this point because it was starting to get late), but I wasn't too cognizant at this point. Despite my copious consumption of shaved iced and tasty cold beverages, I think I had managed to inflict myself with a mild case of heat exhaustion. I was feeling preety incoherent and wring out, so instead of staying in Kyoto to party and/or whatnot, I became one of the half dozen people who headed back to JCMU.

At which point I drank a couple liters of water, ate some fried rice for dinner, and then slept for sixteen hours. I feel much better now.