Have you ever heard of monkeys who like bathing in onsens (hot springs)? You might have seen photos of the famous monkeys at Jigokudani Monkey Park  (地獄谷野猿公苑, Jigokudani Yaen Kōen) in Japan. Photos of the so-called snow monkeys can often be found in Japan travel guidebooks, so, visitors from all over the world come to see them every year. And what better season to see them if not during winter? That is because it is said they like to bathe only when it’s super cold, as a way to brace the cold during harsh winters. The day we went there was not so cold but we were lucky to see one of them bathing like in the photo below 🙂 However, they might also bathe if encouraged to do so with some food given by staffs.

Although it was just one week after I came back to Japan, when my friend invited me on a day road trip to see these monkeys, I couldn’t say no. Jigokudani which roughly translates as “Hell Valley” because of the unusual surrounding landscape, with deep cliffs and many hot springs, is located in Nagano Prefecture. Nagano is famous for its amazing ski resorts such as Hakuba or Shiga Highlands. It is the place to go during winter in Japan!

Getting there from Tokyo can take up to 4 hours so I wouldn’t really recommend going there on a day trip, but if you have no other options, then it is doable. We went there on a national holiday (Coming of Age Day, January 14th) but the roads were not crowded at all, nor the park was crowded. There were many foreign visitors, more than I had expected, which proves the popularity of the park abroad. From the parking lot, there was a 30-minutes walk (hike?) through a forest of pines to the monkey park. Along the way, there were many plates with interesting information about the monkeys. Although I read online about them, there were many facts that I didn’t know as well.

Their species is called “Japanese macaques” and at this park, they can be observed in their natural habitat.

To enable observation of the monkeys in a near-natural environment, they are controlled by feeding instead of by fences. Wild Japanese macaque and humans coexist here in the junction of their separate sphere of activity. Though the monkeys are wild, they can be observed so close up that visitors can practically reach out and touch them. Regardless of the fact that they show no interest in visitors, they do not run away either, making for an interesting sense of distance yet closeness. At Jigokudani, everyone can witness this spectacular display of wildlife.

However, it is prohibited to touch or feed them, and they can get a bit aggressive so it is better to exercise precaution. We saw them fighting while we were around.

Strong bonds between a mother and her child

Within the troop of Japanese macaques there is a strong bond between a mother and child. The fathers, however, have no relationship with their offspring, and it is the mother that remains with the child, protecting it from danger.

After seeing how the monkeys enjoyed their onsen, we headed to one for “humans”.

Yudanaka and Shibu are two famous onsen towns located near Jigokudani. We went to Shibu, a lovely retro town which reminded me a bit of Ikaho. Unfortunately, the public onsen, Shibu Onsen, closed at 16:00 and we were too late for it. But we were lucky to find a private ryokan that would rent their onsen for only 700 yen so we went there. The Ryokan was called Sakaeya and it was a wonderful place. Would consider staying there for a night someday if I get to go back to the area.

As there was no place around open for dinner, we went to the nearby town of Yudanaka and found a great place: Tamaya, a restaurant that specializes in Chanko Ryori and more specifically, Chanko Nabe, Japanese type of nabe (stew) usually eaten in vast quantity by sumo wrestlers. It is often the case that sumo wrestlers after they retire, manage restaurants like this. I also asked the owner of this place if he was a sumo wrestler but he said he wasn’t. He prepared all of our food by himself and had no helpers with the serving neither (so some people from our group would sometimes bring the dishes haha) but he was super nice and the food AMAZING!

Thank you for your visit and stay tuned for more posts coming up soon 🙂