Ito and Atami, from a Monkey’s Perspective －伊東と熱海、お猿さんの観点から－

My family and I took a brief break to the hot spring resorts of Ito and Atami over the New Year’s holidays. 

We mostly enjoyed using the hotel pool and restaurant, but a few other things also caught my son’s imagination. 

As we were climbing up towards Atami Castle, we passed a group of trained monkeys performing a play.  A woman would ask one of the monkeys, “Are you feeling tired?” and the monkey would drag a little chair onto the stage and sit on it with legs crossed, or suchlike.  My wife and I felt a little uncomfortable for the sake of the monkeys, and would have liked to move on quickly.  But my son was mesmerized by the monkeys and wouldn’t leave.  He must have felt some affinity for the little creatures.  His role is basically to be the little monkey of our family, after all. 

My son also took the unusual step of spending money in Atami Castle.  He has developed a very tight-fisted attitude towards cash, and he generally prefers piling up and counting his money to spending it.  But he did buy a fortune for 200 Yen.  He got a level 2 good fortune, and was reasonably satisfied. 

Lastly, he really enjoyed the cable car ride which takes people up to and down from the castle.  It is regarded as one of the shortest cable car rides in Japan, taking only two or three minutes.  The car swung quite a lot as it moved.  I found it a little alarming, but then I didn’t have a piece of paper giving me level 2 good fortune.