Author: Sandra Winarta (Sydney, Australia)
Website: Click here
Photo location: Yudanaka, Nagano, Japan
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Categories: [culture]  [furry pals]  [nature]  

Last year I spent one glorious month in Japan. I did the usual tourist trail of Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, but like most trips I've been on, the most memorable places were off the beaten track.

I visited one such place in the mountains near Nagano called "Jigokudani", or "Hell's Valley". From the little geyser and sulphurous hot springs it quickly became obvious how the place got its name, but the place wasn't quite as inhospitable as the name implied.

Getting there was a bit of an adventure in itself. First was a taxi from my minshuku (a Japanese-style inn with futons on a tatami mat) to the station. And then 3 trains to the spa town of Yudanaka. Then a bus to the bottom of the hill where my next minshuku was meant to be.

A "30 to 40 minute walk", the directions said. If only, as the directions were a bit, um, wrong. Where was the sign for the monkey park? I had no idea, it was getting dark and then it started to drizzle. I ended up approaching a young service station attendant in my broken Japanese.

"Er, excuse me. I go..." It took me awhile to dig out the printouts of my reservation and point. "Here. Where is it?"

He looked at the printouts, with its now runny ink, and ducked inside to fetch a proper map. He then circled the service station and then my minshuku - two thirds up the page via a road and a path.

"OK." I said, "That [path]. Where is it?" [Couldn't say 'How do I get there'].

He didn't know either and fetched his boss. Luckily the boss had more of an idea. "Go back to...[???] And go up [that road]..."

"How long?" I asked hopefully.

"Mmm... 30 minutes maybe."

He looked at me some more, and then looked outside. "It's raining a bit. Do you have an umbrella?"

"I have rain jacket. Ok."

"And the path is slippery."

"I have hiking shoe. I'm ok."

They didn't look very confident but I set off anyway, now expecting to encounter a wilderness like on my last holiday in Tasmania, where I encountered waist-high bogs and had to do some extreme rock-hopping.

The first part wasn't perilous, though the road was very steep - my pack got heavier with every step. I put on my rainjacket as it began to pour.

Ten minutes later, a lady working in a soba eating house by the roadside saw me trudging through the rain took pity on me and called me over.

She must have seen a lot of crazy foreigners hauling backpacks up the hill as she said, "Monkey park is that way. 30 minutes."

Still 30 minutes? Well I must be closer. I found the dreaded path soon after that, which wasn't scary at all - wide and pretty flat and only slightly muddy. And I found the minshuku without too much trouble too. It was a rickety, sprawling old wooden house with real mineral hot spring baths inside and the outside baths had lovely views of the changing autumn foliage.

It also served dinners featuring beautifully crisp mountain vegetable tempura, a hot pot featuring wild boar meat, and wait for it, little fried crickets. Which for the record, I ate.

And of course there were the main attraction - snow monkeys - and plenty of them.

One morning I awoke to find a whole gang of monkeys on the roof ledge outside my window doing a bit of nitpicking. But the place to really see them is next door in the monkey park, where there were some specially designated baths for them.

The area gets lots of snow in the winter and when it gets that cold, a hot bath is the only place to be for both monkeys and humans. It wasn't very cold when I visited so there was only one monkey in the bath, although it wasn't so happy to be disturbed, and I can understand why!

Other submissions by this author: :  A breath of fresh air  :

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