Iwatayama Monkey Park: Tickets, Hike and Feeding Rules
TripToJapan.com Editorial Team
Apr 30, 2026
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TripToJapan.com Editorial Team
You buy the ticket at the bottom, climb 120 stone steps, and then the path settles into a steady slope through the trees for about twenty minutes. At the top there is a clearing, a wooden hut, a view over the whole of Kyoto, and roughly 120 wild Japanese macaques going about their afternoon as though nobody had come.
Iwatayama Monkey Park sits on the hillside above the south bank of the Katsura River in Arashiyama, a seven-minute walk from Hankyu Arashiyama Station. Entry is ¥800 for adults and ¥400 for children, cash only, and the monkeys are genuinely wild: no cages, no enclosures, no fences between you and them.
Admission is ¥800 for anyone 16 and over, ¥400 for children aged 4 to 15, and free for under-threes. Visitors with a disability certificate pay ¥700 or ¥350, and one companion gets the same rate. The Arashiyama Kyoto Monkey Park ticket office takes Japanese yen in cash only, with no credit cards and no e-money, and there is no official advance ticket, so bring notes.
One rule catches people out: you have to enter within 30 minutes of buying your ticket. Buy it when you are ready to walk up, not while you are still deciding whether to do the bamboo grove first.
The park opens at 9:00 and closes at 16:00, with the summit area staying open until 16:30. There is no seasonal variation in those hours, whatever older listings say. It closes on January 1, on occasional irregular holidays, and in heavy rain, snow or typhoon conditions, and it can close early if the troop decides to head further up the mountain.
Toilets are at the entrance and at the summit, and nowhere in between. The summit also has a small playground with a long slide, which is the detail that turns a hillside walk into something children will agree to.
We'll build a costed, pre-planned Japan itinerary you can customise to your taste.
It is about 1.45 km from the entrance to the summit with roughly 160 meters of climbing, and the park allows about 20 minutes. The hard part comes first: a flight of 120 steps immediately past the ticket gate. After that the path is a maintained, graded slope with rest points, manageable for small children and for older visitors taking it slowly.
Wear shoes you can walk in and bring water in summer, because the hillside holds heat and there is nothing to buy on the way up. In winter the surface can be slick after rain. You will start seeing monkeys before you reach the top, usually sitting on the railings as though they own them, which they effectively do.
This is the part most guides get wrong. Food is sold at the summit rest house for ¥100 a bag, and you feed the monkeys from inside the hut, reaching through the wire mesh. You are not allowed to carry the food outside, and bringing your own food for the monkeys is prohibited.
Do not hand the food over directly, because a macaque will take your fingers along with the apple piece. Put it on the feeding shelf and let the monkey pick it up. The whole arrangement looks backwards on arrival, with humans in the cage and monkeys outside it, and it exists because the alternative is a troop that mugs people on the path.
The macaques are wild animals living on their own territory, and the park's rules exist because people forget that. Three of them matter more than the rest.
Do not touch the monkeys, at any time, for any reason. Do not stare into their eyes, which reads as a threat: if one makes a threat face at you, look away and move on calmly. And keep about two meters of distance, which means no reaching in with a phone or a selfie stick for a close-up.
Beyond that: no smoking anywhere in the park, no pets at all, not even carried in a bag, and no drones. Photography is fine, without flash, and from a respectful distance.
The summit clearing gives you one of the best free-standing views in Kyoto, looking north-east over the city with Kyoto Tower visible on a clear day. There are benches, coin-operated binoculars and enough space that the crowd spreads out.
Each season changes it. Cherry blossom in April, deep green through the summer, red maple in the second half of November and into early December, and a stripped-back, long-distance clarity in winter. Late afternoon light is the best for photographs, and since the park closes at 16:00 you should aim to be at the top by 15:00 to get it.
The troop is made up of Japanese macaques, the same species as the hot-spring monkeys of Nagano, and the northernmost non-human primate in the world. These ones live at a comfortable 160 meters rather than in snow, so they have no reason to bathe, but the social behavior is identical: strict hierarchy, constant grooming, and mothers carrying infants on their fronts in spring.
Researchers have followed this troop for decades, which is why the individuals are named and the lineages documented. That long record is what makes Iwatayama Monkey Park different from a zoo visit: you are watching a specific group of animals whose family relationships are known.
If it is the famous bathing monkeys you want, they are 400 km away in Nagano, and our guide to the snow monkeys of Japan covers how to get there.
The entrance is easy to miss. From the south side of Togetsukyo Bridge, walk about 20 meters upstream along the river, then go into the grounds of Ichitani Munakata Shrine: the park entrance is on the left, past the shrine.
Hankyu Arashiyama Station is the closest at a seven-minute walk. The Randen tram's Arashiyama station is about 10 minutes away, Saga-Arashiyama Station on the JR Sanin line is about 15, and the Arashiyama-koen bus stop is five.
All of them are straightforward from central Kyoto, and our guide on getting around Japan covers which pass covers what.
There is no car park. If you drive, the Park First lot in front of Hankyu Arashiyama Station refunds ¥200 of its ¥1,000 charge when you show your park receipt, and that applies to that lot only.
The address is 61 Nakao-Shitacho, Arashiyama, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto 616-0004, and the telephone number is 075-872-0950.
Togetsukyo Bridge is the landmark, 155 meters across the Katsura River. There has been a bridge here since 836; this one was finished in 1934, and although it reads as timber, the structure is reinforced concrete with cypress parapets. The name means moon-crossing bridge.
The Arashiyama Bamboo Grove is a ten-minute walk from JR Saga-Arashiyama Station, free, with no gate and no fixed hours, which means the only way to have it to yourself is to arrive before 8:00. Tenryu-ji temple and Okochi Sanso villa, both alongside it, charge separately.
The Sagano Romantic Train runs from Torokko Saga to Torokko Kameoka along the Hozu river gorge for ¥880 one way, ¥440 for children. Every seat is reserved, online booking opens a month ahead and peak dates sell out, though a limited number of standing tickets go on sale at the station once the seats have gone.
Yes, with one condition: you have to be willing to walk up a hill. For ¥800 you get a real view over Kyoto, 20 minutes of exercise, and an hour with a wild primate troop that has been studied since the 1950s. Budget about 90 minutes in total.
It also pairs neatly with everything else in the area, which is the practical argument for it. A morning at the bamboo grove and Tenryu-ji, lunch by the river, the monkeys in the early afternoon, and you have filled an Arashiyama day without rushing.
For where else to go in Kyoto, we have a separate guide to the city's cultural highlights.
And the geisha districts on the other side of town make the obvious evening counterpart to a morning on the hill.
Arashiyama also photographs as well as anywhere in Japan, which is why it appears in almost every list of the country's most beautiful natural places.
If you want the whole region built into one trip, our Kansai route through Osaka, Nara, Kyoto and Koyasan covers it in eight days.
