Monday, March 1, 2021

Snow Monkeys

The Nagano snow monkeys are the only monkeys in the world that enjoy bathing in outdoor onsens.  Lounging and playing in the water is not typical monkey behavior.  The town Nagano has many outdoor onsens.  The local monkeys observed people in the natural hotsprings and have since been copying.  In fact there is a regular outdoor onsen right next to the one the snow monkeys use.  I saw the building but didn't know what it was.  Bob said he saw two guys walking to the water naked outside near the building.  
In the wintertime people travel to Nagano to see the monkeys in the snow and onsen.  I was excited to see them.  Photographers have traveled to Japan just to take pictures of these monkeys.





The only problem for me was that when I came the monkeys seemed content to just walk around the water and occasionally lean over and take a drink.  I stood in the same exact spot and waited about an hour for a monkey to get into the water.
Everyone else was bored of the monkeys and wanted to go home.  I thought it was pretty cool how there were hundreds of monkeys just walking around us totally ignoring us.
I really wanted to see a monkey swimming.  It was a little frustrating because we waited a long time to come and drove a long way.
Leon's snowman got knocked over as he was building it by two monkeys having a turf war.

I finally gave up and came to the conclusion that the monkeys were just not going to swim at all that day.  I left my spot and went to go find the kids when I happened to look back and see a monkey in the water!  I was surprised and ran over to take my pictures.


 
It was a pretty fun day for everyone.  I was happy to see the monkeys and take their pictures and the kids really liked playing in the snow.

1 comment:

Mary-Anne said...

That is so cool! You got some good photos!