Monkeys & Lanterns

Yesterday a couple of friends and I drove to Nagano to visit the onsen that is famous for being frequented by snow monkeys. It was one of the things that I have been wanting to do since I first came to Japan and seeing as how the weather could start to warm up at any time I needed to get myself over there before it was too late.

I headed out the door at 7:30am to meet up with people at Sean and Alice's apartment and picked up breakfast at a convenience store along the way. Thank god for canned coffee. It's not great but it will get you going on a cold morning.

What are you plowing?!

We piled into Graham's car and readied ourselves for the 3 hour drive. About halfway into the drive we found ourselves stuck behind a couple of snowplows that were clearing about a cm of snow from the shoulder of the highway >.< Luckily, after half an hour of excruciating slowness, the plows peeled away when we crossed the border between Gunma and Nagano.

Once we parked we had to walk up the side of the mountain for 30 minutes. It was absolutely gorgeous and really serene because we were the only people walking (all the other tourists opted to take the bus). The only down side to walking was that my pants got caked with mud around the bottom. :(

Once we got up to the onsen monkeys started popping up all over the place. It was amazing to be surrounded by monkeys and I got some really great shots. There must have been over 100 monkeys there! It is definitely one of the highlights of my time here.

On our way back down the mountain we were passed by a few mini buses taking people down. The road was supposed to be closed to traffic for the winter but I guess the tour buses were exempted. Well, one of them lost control as he was coming down a particularly snowy and twisty section of road and crashed into a guard rail about 10 feet behind us. We decided it was safest to hid behind a tree until it became apparent that he was good and stuck and had to wait for rescue. We didn't want him to free himself only to lose control again and crash into us! The rest of the walk was incident free although we did keep looking over our shoulders!

After our adventures we headed into Nagano City to check out the Lantern Festival at the major temple. The streets leading up to the temple itself had lanterns that had been decorated by local children (and I suspect a few local artisans). It made for a really nice stroll but it was difficult to get any good shots of because there were so many people and I didn't have a tripod for night shots.

It was a great day and it will be one of my fondest memories of Japan thanks to the awesome people I got to spend the day with.