Belated Adventuring Pictures

I mentioned yesterday that I had gone to Arashiyama to do some hiking, but never actually found the place. This was due to a couple of reasons, not the least of which were map failure and a late start - 3PM. On the bright side, I totally headed over to the monkey park, where I got some nice pictures of monkeys, a couple people-monkeys, and a few great panoramas I'll stitch together at some point. Anyway, here's some monkey picture spam.

These first two pictures are of the first monkey I saw. I had to switch to my telephoto lens, 'cause he was about thirty feet away and my 18-55mm just wouldn't cut it at the range without serious cropping, to say nothing about bokeh. The DOF came out nicely with the telephoto lens, I think.

The female hanging through the fencing is sitting at the feeding area. They had decent-sized bags of food that you could buy for a dollar and feed to the monkeys by hand. I eventually ended up buying one and I really think it was worth it. I mean, for that sort of thing, I'd expect they'd charge you a bunch of money, just because it's touristy and it's what usually happens with stuff like that. Anyway, I fed most of the bag two or three of them and discovered they have quite sharp claws. I mean, I guess I would too if I didn't clip my fingernails, but it hadn't occurred to me before. One of the weirdest things to me was their size, which ranged from the size of a small cat to a medium-sized dog.

This guy with the munchies at the right was fed an acorn outside so this guy could get a picture of it, and I took the opportunity as well. This was still up by the feeding area, which doubles as an observation area, and you can see the entire city of Kyoto. Well, a lot of city, in any case.

At left is the panorama, though it's not that impressive as it would appear that I didn't line up my shots right, so I had to crop a lot out. I'll dig around later and see if I can get something close to a 360. I took two sets of shots for that, so I should be able to.


Alright, then. This is right after the resting area, where there's a drinking pond that I saw a couple using. This pose was too good not to pass up, and even with how nicely it came out, I got it on accident trying to get a different pose that makes this one look lame. I was too slow on the camera draw, though.

Oh, and monkey snuggles. I saw a couple monkeys sleeping together and the phrase "monkey snuggles" just stuck in my mind. I know a kitten for whom the monkey snuggles pictures are for, but she's not greedy, so everybody gets some monkey snuggles.

Seriously, who can resist the monkey snuggles?


Here's a monkey in a tree. It seemed odd that monkeys are basically thought of as hanging out in trees all the time, but this area had plenty and they all kind of walked around. This guy with the cute expression just watched one of his buddies fall ten feet through a bunch of branches 'cause the branches in another tree snapped. Nothing like hearing a snap followed by a serious of fwooshes as a monkey discovers gravity does indeed apply when you're in a tree.

Right before I took this shot, I had pissed off a monkey apparently. I think I was taking pictures of it cleaning its mate, or maybe just one of its friends. Who knows. In any case, he/she got all pissy and ran at me and growled. Next time I go, I'll be wearing my nice, big desert boots, in the event that a monkey finds my feet to need some gnawing or something.

Segue.

A monkey licking the handrail of a slide. Go figure.
There was a sign posted saying "Don't run down the slide. Please only slide down the slide." I have to wonder who first ran down the slide and broke something.
In any case, the slide was pretty cool. It had about 15 feet of drop and about 20 feet of horizontal displacement. And a monkey licking it.


Here's the last picture from the monkey park, and I felt it suitably ironic that, inside the monkey park was a small human park, where the monkeys could sit and watch the humans play. Is that really irony?