Arashiyama Monkey Park Iwatayama

photo by Harperawl · CC0

photo by Minseong Kim · CC BY-SA 4.0

At the summit, at 160 metres, you can buy 100-yen bags to feed 120 free-roaming macaques.

From the entrance, in the grounds of Kuruyagi Munakata Shrine, it is a twenty-minute climb: first a hundred and twenty steps, then a gentle slope through the woods. At the top, at 160 metres, a rest house looks out over Kyoto: on clear days you can see Kyoto Tower. 120 macaques live free on the mountain: in the rest house you can buy 100-yen bags to hold the food out through the mesh, never by hand, because a monkey can grab your fingers.

The park was created on Mount Iwatayama, a spur of Arashiyama in the Nishikyo district, where since 1954 Kyoto University primatologists have studied a colony of Japanese macaques left free on the mountain; the park for visitors opened in 1957. It is not an enclosure: the monkeys move about everywhere in the woods, and it is the visitors who climb up to them along a path, among cherry trees in spring and maples in autumn.

ℹ️ Open 9:00–16:00 (at the summit until 16:30); closed on 1 January, and in February opening is reduced to weekends and public holidays only. Tickets: adults (16+) 800 yen, children aged 4–15 400 yen, under-3s free; cash only, no cards or e-money. Not allowed: your own food for the monkeys, pets, drones and smoking; the 20-minute climb is not suitable for pushchairs.

🚉 Arashiyama · 7 min walk

Sources: monkeypark.jp · monkeypark.jp

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