Snow Monkeys

On Saturday we decided to activate our rail pass which we had bought before leaving the US.  We wanted to travel to just outside of the Nagano area to see the Japanese snow monkeys.  These are monkeys that are native to northern Japan and besides humans are the farthest north living primates in the world.  These particular monkeys are especially famous because they live near an onsen (a Japanese word for hot springs) where they bathe and play in the warm water throughout the winter.  The location where they live has snow for at least a third of the year making the monkeys playing in the warm water against an often snowy backdrop especially photogenic. 

The trip would require two train rides, a bus ride, and a pretty good walk.  The first train, from Nagoya to Nagano, left hourly and was about a 3 hour trip.  We would then get on a local train for a 45 minute train ride to the end of the line where we would board a bus for a 15 minute ride to the park entrance, then a roughly 2 KM walk up the hill to the monkeys.  We left our room at 7:30 AM to catch the 8 AM train.  The train station was unusually empty at this time of day. Normally it is filled with thousands of people walking in every possible direction.  We are pretty certain that the Nagoya train station is much busier than the busiest we have ever seen Grand Central Station in New York City. At 7:30 AM however it was nice.

Eight banks of elevators but no people, very unusual

Only a couple of dozen people, far less than the couple of hundred that usually are here

The problem with the rail pass is that you need to purchase your ticket from an actual person rather than from a ticket machine.  The ticket machines are far more convenient because there are dozens of them, they have an English button, and there is never a line more than 1 or 2 people deep.  Buying a ticket from a person requires you to go to the ticket office, which in Nagoya is busy, and speaking to a person who often speaks little English.  The ticket office despite being in the same building as the hotel is a 5-8 minute walk from our room.  The ticket office had a line of people but they also had about 12 windows open so we didn’t wait in line for more than about 3 minutes.  We know our numbers in Japanese and we know how to say the destination of where we want to go so getting a ticket from a person is never an issue.  We told the guy 2 tickets to Nagano, green car, and handed him our rail pass.  There are two options from getting to Nagoya to Nagano. The bullet train, which is about 3 ½ hours and requires a change of train in Tokyo is about 600KM (360 miles) and costs 23,000 yen ($268) each way per person!  The other option is a limited express train which is shorter, 250 KM (150 miles) and costs about 11,000 yen ($170) each way per person.  This also gets you there a little quicker, in just under 3 hours.  This is the train we took.  The limited express train traverses an especially scenic route.  Because of this the train is called a “wide view” train and it has extra big windows.  Also, the front car of the train, which happens to be the green car, has a giant window so you can sit in your seat while looking out the front of the train as it travels.  We had ridden one of these trains before in Japan so we knew the seat to get would be right in the front of the car, or seats 1A-1B or 1C-1D.  We had no idea how to ask for this from a non-English speaking person so we asked one of the administrators at Chris’s job to write that request for us in Japanese, which she gladly did.  We handed our request to the ticket agent along with our rail passes.  He gave us two choices for trains, the 8 AM or the 9 AM.  We told him we wanted to be on the 8 AM train, which was now less than 15 minutes from leaving.  He gave us our tickets without saying a word about the note we handed him (he did read it) and we noticed that we had seats 7C-7D.  You can request your tickets be printed in English but we never asked because we have found that when we use an agent they usually do this without us asking.  This guy did not but by now we have ridden enough trains to know how to read the ticket.  Since we hadn’t eaten yet we headed for a pastry shop in the station before walking to our platform to board the train. The train was already in the station because this was the train’s initial departure point.  We boarded our train with plenty of time to spare (maybe 7 minutes) and Chris took a couple of pictures of the train from the inside and out.

Wide view Shinano train

Inside the "green car"

Our ticket for seat 7C in car #1 on the 8:00 AM train from Nagoya

The train trip was about 3 hours, just as advertised.  After only about a half hour out of Nagoya we were already in the mountains and we stayed in the mountains for most of the trip to Nagano.  The trip was certainly scenic but we were tired and we admittedly slept for part of the way. 

View of Nagano from the train a few miles outside of town

 

Before leaving the hotel Chris had written down the times of the connecting train in Nagano but for some reason he only wrote down connection times had we taken the 7 or 9 AM train out of Nagoya.  Since we did not know which train we needed to be on with this particular connection we headed to the information center in the station, where they have English speaking staff.  We told them where we were going and they told us the quicker option would be a bus directly from Nagano station to the monkey park rather than another train, then a bus.  The cost of the bus would be 1300 yen each way per person but would get us there in 45 minutes total rather than 45 minutes by train then 15 minutes by bus.  The cost of the train/bus combination would have been about the same so we chose this option.  The instructions they gave us for boarding the bus were simple, they told us exactly which bus platform to head to and how to pay.  When we walked downstairs to the bus platforms there was a long line of people waiting to board the bus which also goes to several ski resorts.  We did not think all of these people would fit on the bus and we were right.  Luckily, as soon as the bus filled up, it departed and a second bus pulled right in behind it for the remaining people.  When they came around collecting money before boarding the bus Chris opened his wallet and saw 6 bills and assumed one of them was a 5000 yen note rather than the 6-1000 yen notes he really had.  He took out 3 of the 1000 yen notes, paid for the tickets and we took our seats on the bus.  The bus ride was uneventful.  We arrived at the bus stop nearest the monkey park and really had no idea where to go.  There was a small sign pointing up the hill that said monkey park so we started walking up what seemed like someone’s driveway.  As it turns out, it was someone’s driveway.  We realized our mistake before reaching the house and walked back down to the street.  At the foot of the driveway an older British man asked us if we were looking to go to the monkey park.  We said yes and he pointed us in the right direction.  He told us that had he not been there before he would have made the same mistake.  We thanked him and started walking up the hill. 

Our bus

View from the bus stop near the monkey park

We were kind of hungry at this point as well.  We only had about 15 minutes from the time we got off the train until our bus left so we did not grab something to eat while we were there.  We figured that we would grab something at a shop near the monkey park.  It turned out to be a good thing that we didn’t get something to eat because that 5000 yen note that Chris thought he had was really a 1000 yen note.  We realized this when we saw a sign indicating that it cost 500 yen to get into the monkey park.  Chris reached into his wallet to get 1000 yen ready and noticed that he only had 3 – 1000 yen notes in there, not a 5000 and 2 – 1000’s as we thought.  Now we did not lose 5000 yen someplace, we just incorrectly assumed we had more money than we did.  This was not good because we needed 1000 yen to get into the monkey park and another 2600 to get back to Nagano.  We had 3000 in bills, plus the 400 in change from the bus ride.  We counted the rest of our change.  We had another 442 yen in change for a total of 3842 yen.  We needed 3600 for the monkeys and bus.  While ATMs are plentiful in Japan just like in any other place, our non-Japanese bank cards will only work in a select few.  We have found that they only work in the post office ATMs which in the city is not an issue.  In a rural area like this however there was not a post office to be found.  So we had 242 yen or about $3 to hold us over until we got back to Nagano.  Not good because we were hungry.  There was not much we could do about this but set our bus money aside and start walking towards the monkeys. 

The first major sign we encountered told us we had a 1.8 KM walk.  We started walking up a paved street past houses towards the end of the road where we saw the path up the hill into the woods with another sign saying 1.6 KM and 25 minutes to go.  We started walking up the hill towards where the monkeys live in an area called Jigokudani, which means Hell’s Valley.  It is called this because it is a narrow valley with steep walls on each side and down in the bottom are hot springs which give off steam making it kind of look like Hell.  The path up the valley was snow covered the entire way but being that this is a popular place the snow was well packed but very slippery in spots.  We took our time making the walk and we got to the point where you pay in about 40 minutes.  We paid our 500 yen to enter and walked another couple of hundred yards to where you could start seeing the monkeys. 

Start of trail

Along the trail

Near the end of the trail...notice the steam coming from the ground

Despite the fact that you have to pay to enter, this is not a zoo or some kind of wildlife refuge.  Despite seeing lots of people, these monkeys are wild animals.  They are not in any way enclosed, in fact they are free to leave if they like.  They hang around the hot spring probably because of the warmth but they are in no way limited to staying there.  While the monkeys’ main diet is plants, insects, fruits and nuts, we also suspect that the monkeys are fed by people who work there which probably gives them an incentive to stick around.

As we approached the area where the monkeys mostly hang out there were numerous signs warning you to not eat in front of the monkeys because they will steal your food, not to look them in the eye because they see that as a form of aggression, not to touch the monkeys and not to bring pets near the monkeys. 

 

The first glimpse of monkeys we had was a bunch of them from a distance, playing on the hill side across the valley.  At first glance there did not seem like many of them but as you looked closer you could see many of them running around and playing.  As we walked further up the trail we got to the hot springs area where there was a hot springs pool that several monkeys were bathing in.  We ended up spending a pretty long time here watching the monkeys play and bathe.  There was one family which consisted of a mother and father and baby monkey which was especially fun to watch.  The monkeys are very much like people.  They pick at themselves, scratch themselves, make facial expressions like people and act very much like we do.  They were really fun to watch and they were everywhere!  You could get within inches of them and they mostly left you alone.  We did see one woman who kind of was grabbed by a monkey, kind of the way an adult would slap a child’s hand when they are being bad but we suspect that it was because the woman and a man got on each side of the monkey to take its picture.  Besides that there was no form of aggression between the monkeys and humans whatsoever.  There was some aggression among the monkeys though.  One of the monkeys seemed to be a little bigger than the rest and seemed to be the dominant monkey.  When he walked the others got out of his way, often in a hurry.  We ended up taking lots of pictures before heading inside a nearby building to get some warmth for a little while.  It wasn’t until we got into the warm building that we noticed that our hands were numb from the cold.  We ended up spending 200 of our 242 yen on hot chocolate, which really hit the spot.  We had been so excited from seeing the monkeys that we did not even feel hungry anymore.  For anyone interested in seeing the monkeys for yourselves there is a webcam there: http://jigokudani-yaenkoen.co.jp

You can tell how small this guy is by the size of the shovel he is standing next to

The one on the right was the mean one

This is the one who swatted at the woman who got too close.

After heading back into the cold for a few more minutes we started walking back down the trail towards the bus stop.  We left the monkeys around 2 PM for a bus that left at 3.  The busses ran every hour to hour and a half so we wanted to be sure we made the 3 PM bus. When we got back to the bus stop there were already about a half dozen people waiting for the bus and before we knew it there were more than 20 people waiting.  Luckily when the bus pulled up it was nearly empty so everyone was able to be seated for the 45 minute trip back to Nagano.

On the way out...we did not see any.

The road we walked up from the bus stop

When we got back to Nagano we went back into the information center and inquired about a post office/ATM.  They told us where to find one so we headed there to replenish.  After getting more money we headed for a place to eat.  We found a place right across the street from the train station which had an English menu with pictures.  At this point anything would have been good but the English menu with pictures worked out well.  We ordered a couple of salads, some soba noodles, which is a regional specialty, and tempura, all of which really hit the spot.  We paid for our stuff and walked around a couple of shops near the train station to browse before going back to buy our tickets.  We intentionally did not buy our tickets first for fear that the train would be leaving in minutes.  We figured if we didn’t know when the train was leaving we would have time to explore.  If we knew the train was leaving at a certain time we would be rushed and might miss something.  After exploring a little bit we headed inside and bought our tickets.  As it turned out the next train was in about 55 minutes, which meant we missed a train by about 5 minutes.  So we bought our tickets to Nagoya and then walked back outside to explore a little more before leaving.

We did not try the horse meat.

Radish salad and salad with a horseradish dressing

Tempura

Soba noodles

 

We boarded our train about 15 minutes before the 6:11 PM departure time; again the train was already in the station since this was where the train began its journey.  For about 10 minutes we thought we would have the green car to ourselves but about 5 minutes before departure another guy boarded and took his seat.  The extra wide windows would do us no good on this journey because it was dark out so we did not care where we sat.  We got back to Nagoya right on time at 9:20 PM and by 9:30 we were back in our hotel room.

The view out the back of the train from seat 1A/1B

Empty Green Car