Arashiyama: walking, rowing, cycling through NW Kyoto

Thanks to Gretchen (we love you!), we still have this one picture from our funnest day in Japan so far. (we lost all our Kyoto pics when Mike's computer died, but he had emailed this to G.) This is the best picture that I've ever seen of Mike. Glad I can now share it with the world.
Our 2nd day began by biking from the hostel to Arashiyama. We walked through town and found a cute little soba shop for lunch. We quickly realized that the "Arashiyama walking tour" described in Lonely planet was just as touristy as the Kiyomizu temple. The streets are very cute; dotted with Japanese sweets shops, tea shops, handicrafts, and many temples are just a short detour off the streets.
But, instead, we headed straight across a huge river for MONKEY PARK! We payed a small fee, got the basic info from a bilingual brochure ("Don't look monkeys in the eye or feed them"), and took off hiking up the mountain. After about 20 minutes, were huffing and puffing & hearing monkey screetching. Then we saw them! Cute little monkeys, about two feet tall or so. Many of them were relaxing in the afternoon sun, some were picking bugs off each other. They didn't seem bothered by us walking by, and went about there business. They were all roaming free on this mountaintop. What a relief! I had my doubts, thinking it might be tiny overcrowded cages. But these guys seemed to be happy. Well... at one point we two screetching males ran right by us on the trail. A little scary, but one backed down before things got ugly. Wish we hadn't lost these photo! We had great pics of the babies.
Then we hiked back down to the river bank. Here we joined other couples and rented a boat for an hour. I made fun of Mike's rowing, and then when I took a turn, I almost steered us into a big motor boat full of Japanese tourists. All I could do was laugh and cry, and we definitely got some curious stares. Japanese honeymoon!