Monkey Onsen, Nagano! Day 1

1/28/17
This week I went with three friends (Mike, Cormac and Felipe) to the famous Monkey Onsen in Nagano, Japan. We head out from Fukushima early in the morning to make our way to the onsen in the afternoon. In the mountains of northern Nagano, the Japanese Macaques come down from the mountain in the morning and bathe in the waters of the natural hot springs in the area. In the afternoon they leave the hot springs and spend their time eating, playing and relaxing. One of these hot springs is owned by a ryokan (traditional Japanese-style inn.) It was really expensive and confusing to book a room at the ryokan, so we decided to visit the monkey onsen during the hours it was open to the public, between the hours of 12pm and 3pm. As you may have noticed, this is after the prime “bathe with monkeys time,” which I didn’t know until too late. But we decided to try it anyways. The rest of the hot springs are located in a monkey park, where you can walk around, and take pictures amongst the monkeys and watch them bathe and play.

We arrived at the entrance to the monkey park just before noon, and we walked past all the tourists and the shops. A bus came by to pick the people up waiting at the stop. It honked, and I got momentarily distracted, which was enough time for me to fall into the “Gaijin Trap!” The gaijin trap is what we foreigners lovingly refer to the deep and dangerous gutters that align Japan’s roads. You don’t see these in many western countries, so we are not used to them. And, as a result, we gaijin often fall into them.

I went down hard. It was about a foot and a half deep and about as wide as my hips. My foot slid along the bottom and got stuck under the concrete covering. My hips got stuck in the trap itself. My phone, phone case, purse and external battery went flying everywhere! I was stunned and confused for a few seconds, but once I realized what had happened and where I was I started laughing. Cormac was walking right behind me and saw the whole thing. He burst out laughing and attempted to help me out of the trap. Felipe was walking looking at his phone and heard a woman at the bus stop gasp when she saw me. This caused him to look up and see me in the trap. He says that if he hadn’t heard the woman gasp at my fall, he too would have likely walked into the trap (or me,) as well. Mike too saw me in the trap and tried to help me out.

My hip and foot were firmly wedged in the trap, so it took a good 45 seconds to a minute to get me out. I had no leverage and we were all laughing so hard, we had no strength. Finally I was able to wiggle out and we made our way up the mountain. Here are my bruises from 11 hours and 21 hours later:

We followed this long path up the mountain that lead to the ryokan and the entrance to the monkey park. It was really pretty. But the walkway was neglected and super slippery. In japan they don’t often clear the snow from walkways, and instead just leave people to walk on top of it. This makes the snow paths turn into slippery ice paths. They are treacherous, and I saw more than a dozen people biff it while walking along.

Along the path up there are a bunch of signs that educate you about the lives of the monkeys and the part the onsen play in their lives during the winter.

There were beautiful, snow-covered hills on the sides of the path, and down below you could hear the river.

There was also a large canal running along the path, at one point, and my friends kept warning me to watch out for it.

When we got to the top, the path split. To the left across the river was the ryokan, to the right was the entrance to the monkey park. It was nearly 1pm, so we only had a short amount of time left to bathe wit monkeys. The onsen is open to the air, so we looked over at the bath, which was in full view of the path.

Yes, this is a man in the onsen taking a selfie with a monkey.

We approached it and saw steam spouting from a hole in the ground, but the ground was covered in snow. This created a layer of ice on the snow, and it was smooth like glass. It was really beautiful.

We then walked up to the ryokan, and across the little bridge spanning the river. There was a little monkey sitting on the bridge and looking over the river. It was not bothered as we passed it.

That’s when we noticed that it wasn’t looking at the river; it was watching two other monkeys having sex down on the banks of the river. This monkey was a little voyeur!

I thought the layers of snow on this roof were gorgeous!

We bought our onsen ticket and got changed. This was a traditional-style, mixed-sex onsen. In Japan it is a normal thing to bathe in an onsen with the opposite sex. Although, through recent years, it has become more and more western in their attitudes towards bathing and it is becoming more common to have sex-segregated onsen. I have no such attitudes and am not bothered by being naked in front of others. I would rather hang out with friends of a different sex in an onsen than have to sit by myself.
As we walked towards the onsen, we could see one monkey sitting in the water. Cormac was the first in and he approached the monkey and sat about five feet away from it. After about fifteen seconds he decided that he’d bathed enough for the day, and left. So Cormac got to bathe with a monkey, briefly, but the rest of us did not.  But we did hang out in the onsen for about an hour waiting for more monkeys to come around.

And look at the layers of snow on these rocks!

You could see the steam from the onsen condensing and freezing on Cormac's hair.

After about forty minutes of chatting in the onsen with no monkeys coming to say hi, Mike and Felipe got bored and went in to go change. Cormac and I were optimistic and decided to wait a bit longer. This worked out for us because after about five minutes three monkeys came down from the hill and came to sit by the edge of the onsen.

Two of the monkeys started drinking the onsen water (eeeeeewwwww! People and Monkey soup!)

And one took an interest in my phone that was sitting nearby on my towel.  I feared the monkey would run off with it, so I calmly approached the monkey and slowly took my phone away from it.

I think he was disappointed, because he sulked away to lick the salt and minerals off a pipe that was supplying the onsen water from the ground. He was totally cute! The other two monkeys soon walked off as well.

It wasn’t long after that that Cormac and I got out of the onsen and all four of us made our way to the monkey park.

In this photo you can see some people in the onsen.

The path was still treacherous, and it was jam-packed with people!

Taking pictures of the picture takers.

We walked down by the river and the other onsen pools, and took pictures of so many monkeys. Most of them ignored us, but some would come up to us and say hello.

The monkeys develop calluses on their butts so that they can sit on the cold ground during the winter.

Every now and then you’d see some monkeys getting in a fight and smacking each other, but it was all over pretty quickly. The most curious of the monkeys were the babies and juveniles.

You can see here the long, weird nipples on the moms.

 

A lot of the monkeys were super cute! I learned that their bodies retain heat better than human’s bodies, so that they are able to hang out in the onsen in the morning, and later in the day when they leave, they don’t freeze.

After our fill of monkeys we walked back down the mountain and made our way back to the car. From there we checked into our hostel. It was a really nice hostel. It was an old ryokan that had been remodeled into a hostel. It was really nice and everything was new. It had only been open for 6 months at that point. If you are in the area, I would definitely recommend it.

I love the look of these layers of snow!

After checking in we went to a little izakaya (restaurant and pub.) I ordered soba noodles and gyoza. The soba was pretty good, but the gyoza was AMAZING! Seriously, there is no exaggeration when I say this: The gyoza I had at that restaurant was the best gyoza I have ever had in my life. I will forever dream about the gyoza from that small town in a skiing and monkey onsen town in Nagano. I will be forever taunted with the knowledge of where the best gyoza in the world is, and just never be able to go there again.  Such is my tragic fate.

After eating our fill, Mike went back to the hostel because he was feeling tired, and Cormac, Felipe and I went to a little bar on the next road.

I saw this slab of ice and snow sliding off a roof.

I did a bad thing and mixed what I was drinking, and the next day I was in a bad way. But not that night, those were the problems of the future. That night we just had fun talking and listening to music. I really wanted to go out to karaoke, but the nearest karaoke place was over an hour away by walking, and none of us really wanted to do that.

After the bar we went back to the restaurant and got another order of that gyoza. I couldn’t leave that town without having one last serving. Without saying goodbye. I had to.

We then went back to the ryokan and got some rest for our next day of adventure and returning to Fukushima.