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.

Nagano Snow

We finally made it to Nagano!  I say finally because it has been on my list of places to go ever since since we first got to Japan.  Three and a half years later and we finally made it.  Our original plan had to get pushed back  a couple weeks because of COVID.  That was disappointing, but I'm so glad we got to go.

We didn't get any snow this year and the kids loved to play in it.  I think that was definitely the highlight of the trip for the kids.

We had a hard time finding a cheap, close, hotel that will take 8 people hotel we liked, so we decided to make one long crazy day out of it and left very early in the morning and got home at night.  The kids all said it was worth the 11 hour total drive.  

The main reason to go for me was to see the snow monkeys.  I'll post more about them next time.

Once we got on path to the monkeys Calista was so slow.  She just wanted to play in the snow so badly it was hard to get her to keep walking.  Bob was also stressed that she was going to slip off the edge of the path and roll down the hill.  I think the walk took us twice as long as most people, but that was half the fun.

Beatrix wanted out of the carrier, so she started to get upset.  

Calista was slow enough that the girls had time to make a small snowman before Calista caught up to them.

I found a new man hole cover!  The apples reminded me of Washington.  Too bad we rarely eat apples anymore.  They are pretty expensive at the commissary so we go for applesauce now instead.