Iwatayama: The Climb to Arashiyama Monkey Park

Japan Trip Series, Part 4

​Part 3 ended with rain, bamboo, and the Katsura River… and the promise of monkeys next. Now it’s monkey time!

​The Arashiyama Monkey Park (Iwatayama) is a great attraction and a solid short workout. The summit rest area (i.e. where you’ll see most of the monkeys) is about a 15-minute hike from the entrance, with over 100 metres of elevation gain.

​Don’t let the climb scare you off. This place is worth it, especially if you come from somewhere where monkeys are not a normal part of daily life (‘Hello’ from Manitoba, Canada). The troop (yes, that’s the official term for a group of monkeys) at the summit is the kind of wildlife encounter that lands right in the sweet spot between awe and adrenaline. Some monkeys were cute. Some were chill. Some were a bit hardcore, but mostly with each other. I didn’t see any aggression toward humans, and the staff shut down monkey-on-monkey conflict pretty fast. Watching them move through their own social gravity—unbothered, watchful, occasionally intense—was endlessly compelling.

​The view is the other reward. From up high, Kyoto opens up in layers: City grid, river corridor, distant slopes, and that soft atmospheric haze that makes everything feel slightly cinematic. It’s the kind of vantage point that makes you pause (not because you have to, but because your brain demands a minute to render it all).

​Also: Modern phone cameras are freaking amazing. Between keeping my distance and the monkeys’ constant motion, the extra zoom on my iPhone 17 Pro really came in handy. It let me stay back and still capture expressions, posture, and those tiny moments that feel like they’ll evaporate if you don’t catch them.

​One thing the park is very clear about is how to behave around the monkeys. Signage emphasizes distance and restraint: Keep more than 2 metres away, don’t stare into their eyes, don’t touch them, and don’t show or feed them food outside designated areas (basically from within a cage (for you, not the monkeys, haha)). When taking photos, the park also asks visitors not to point a camera/smartphone directly toward the monkeys, and not to crouch down. 

​With those rules in mind, the experience becomes what it should be: Observation. You’re visiting them, not the other way around.

​Stay tuned for part 5 on Wednesday, February 18th. More monkeys!

Note: All photos and videos in this post were taken by me with an iPhone 17 Pro.