Spring things

Monkey Mountain at Shodoshima Island

 I've been here twice I think and Bret's been several times to show visitors around. We always have a nice time and it's a good place to see monkeys in the wild.

 For 100 yen you can feed them beans, vegetables, and other healthy snacks. There's a staff member for your safety, in case the monkeys start fighting over the food, which happens all the time. It's a little sad because obviously the stronger tougher monkeys push to the front to get the snacks, but you can throw the food out to the outer reaches of the gathered monkeys to give the outliers a shot. In my observations of watching people feed animals in these types of places, people always look for the hungriest and neediest looking ones to feed first, or the ones who can present themselves the most endearingly at the front. At least here at this monkey reserve there is a whole mountain of forest full of all sorts of things monkeys can eat, so if they don't feel like being in the mosh pit they can go find lots of things to snack on.

 You can observe so much cute monkey behavior. The grooming and cuddling is so adorable. They do get boisterous and fight sometimes, which is a little jarring but doesn't last long.

 Some of the rules posted around instruct you not to touch the monkeys or purposefully make eye contact with them, because it's aggressive.

 But they'll happily mill about you. Last time I went I had a couple of monkeys investigating my pockets and things like that but they were pretty uninterested and skittish this time around. Which is good it means people arent feeding them out of their pockets. By having only one designated feeding area it keeps them from associating people with getting fed.

 Snacking in the wild :)

 Similar to what I look like when enjoying a snack after a day's work

I love how social they are and how big their groups are. They are a big community and it's a good non abusive place to see monkeys in their natural habitat.

Nikko!

If you ever go to Nikko, be sure to wake up as early as possible to get to the tourism sites. We were lucky we just happened to get up at sunrise.

See this picture? If we had gotten there even an hour later it would have a hundred tourists in the background. People come from all over! We heard people from south america, all over japan, and all over the west.

The Futarasan shrine complex is an enormous complex of buildings. Each one is ginormous and ornately decorated. Many of them had gold plating (fake gold plating, of course)

Everything was extra colorful and majestic. It was really fun to walk around!

One of the golden ones

bad lighting but everything behind me is white and gold!

White and gold dragon from the portion where photos werent allowed. Oops ;)

Was Nikko worth the drive out? Absolutely! It had so many interesting shrines and temples and especially the main one we visited everything was so supersized we felt like ants! It's very impressive and a great place to take photos and enjoy the surroundings.

Zao fox village!

I don't know where we first heard about the fox village in Zao, but I want to say it was reddit. Needless to say we go to anywhere we hear is full of animals we can't normally be around. We travel a lot and have never heard of a place where you can interact with foxes in such close proximity

So when you first walk in you're like, what's going on. Honestly nothing inside is much worth the time. They should get rid of the smaller enclosures with the rare fox breeds that "need to be isolated" I guess they are better there than dead....but it's not worth it in my opinion to keep them there for the sake of advertising that they have loads of fox breeds. We did stop and have a look at all the different foxes though. Inside is also where you can hold a fox for 400 yen.

This is where the magic starts happening. Down this path leads to the start of the circuit track around the large free roaming outside area. Fox paradise! Yes it was cold (5 degrees C). Yes I had a coat, and two pairs of nylons so it wasn't too bad to get the photos. I just hate photos of me in five coats. I look like a homeless person and it's not flattering.

Keeping a respectful distance towards my loved ones

This fox was out for treats. He knew someone somewhere had to have them, lol. The feeding area is separate and very strictly observed. Chaos can break out very easily, you don't want to be swarmed by a hoard of hungry foxes!

china

 people doing calisthenics training exercises  I did them too! What an incredible sight. At first I was like, is this a flash mob? No, better.

Ok, so to explain why I was in China... I had a connection flight that ran late, so the airline gave me a free hotel, and China has a nice 1-2 day visa for these occurrences (which I *did not* know about). So I was like, trying to unpop my ears and groggy from a 10 hr flight and all of a sudden smiling people are telling me I can hang out in China and then leading me to a bus. Hahahaha. Good thing I'm not paranoid! Everything went better than expected. The people of Ghanzhou were friendly, cheerful, and helpful. People on the street seemed pretty peppy, the place had a good vibe.

Actually, this accidental mini adventure to China has really warmed me to the idea of exploring China more. I honestly had very little interest before :)