When we arrived in Chuzenji, the Italian guy, who already had seen Nikko, went to look at the waterfall. I stayed to wait for the bus back. As I walked around a bit, I saw a small monkey kid climbing up behind a bridge. Excited, I pulled out my camera, and took some steps ahead to get a good angle. But the kid suddenly slid down, and up come a bigger monkey, and it did not just stay at the bridge pillar, but started to run towards me.

I realised that it not like me taking photos of the family's youngest, and that it was time to run from the place. I don't really know what happened, but there was a small slope on the pavement, and it was probably there were I lost my footing and fell to the ground. Thankfully the monkey did not exploit the situation, but when I rose, it came towards me again, and I had to start running again.

And if all that happened in all that miserable snow on the mountain was that my trousers had gotten dirty, things were rougher in this built-up area. I had abrasions on hands, my elbow and knee, and there a hole on my trousers. Fact is that the trousers never made it back to Tokyo – I bought a new pair later in Nikko.

The picture? Well, I don't know. I had the finger on the trigger as I was running. To see pictures of monkeys, see the pictures from Miyajima. That was the same sort of monkeys. But they were more used to cameras.