Today was awesome!! It started out kinda rough though :/ I woke up with a pretty awful stomach ache which wasn't too fun. I also spent some of the morning reviewing more Japanese. I never realized how awesome Genki books were until now lol. After that, the fun stuff began. 

So a group of the exchange students got together to go to the Monkey Mountain. We ate lunch in the cafeteria and then headed to the Farmer's Market to get cheap produce. Once that was finished, we took a bus down to Beppu Station. We had some time to kill to wait for the bus that could take us to the mountain so we stopped in Mister Donut. I got Jr. Donuts which were super yummy :) 

After killing some time, the bus showed up and we were on our merry way. We get to the Monkey Mountain and it only costs $5 to go. Anyway, right as you start walking up this mountain, monkeys show up out of nowhere. We walk around and are taking pictures. Suddenly, we see this poor Japanese women being attacked by a Mommy monkey. It was pretty scary lol. 

As we head up further, we get to the monkey congregation where most of them chill. One of the workers tells us that is about to be feeding time and that we should watch. Here is what feeding time consists of: a worker has a cart full of yams and he runs with it and a back door releases the yams. As soon as this happens, mass chaos ensues. There are monkeys everywhere. They take their food and run. There were fights over food, there was screaming; it was super intense. After feeding time was universal cleaning time. Literally every monkey was getting groomed. It was cool to see them act as a synchronized society. We definitely got our $5 worth! 

We finished up there and headed to You-Me town. We ran into Vanessa and Ellie. Today happened to be Vanessa's birthday so I chilled with them for a bit. We did some shopping and I picked up a couple things including an awesome new watch and umbrella! We followed that up with a cheap and delicious dinner and ended the night with ice cream from Baskin Robbins. I was really proud of myself because I tried a flavor exclusive to Japan (Dainagon Azuki) and it's a sweet bean ice cream. It was super yummy and tasted a little like coffee to me. :) 

A rather successful day if I do say so myself <3