little house on the westside

I have always wanted to see the Snow Monkeys in Japan, and Abby&I were due for a girls' day, so I signed us up for a tour to the Snow Monkey park on March 1st. The tour itself was not that great, as our tour guide was more like a field-trip chaperon than a guide, but alas, we got through the day and still enjoyed all the sights! The day started (not-so)bright & early when we left the apartment at 3:45am. We had to walk onto base to catch the bus and I was concerned that we may not be able to find a taxi at that hour. We did, however, get a taxi once on base and we got on the tour bus at around 4:30am and left at 4:45. Our first stop was a rest stop at about 7am, where Abby got some hot cocoa and then we continued on our way.

It's starting to snow outside!

Our first stop on the tour was Matsumoto Castle - we had about an hour and a half to tour the castle and the museum next door.

The castle was bare inside and you had to take off your shoes because of the hardwood, but we headed up to the top floor and got some great views of the surrounding countryside.

At the museum

The next stop was for lunch, which was way too long in my opinion (almost 2 hours and we haven't even seen the snow monkeys yet!). Abby got some curry and rice and I got a bowl of soba noodles and tempura. Afterwards we got some apple ice-cream cones (this area is known for their apple production). I also bought some apple kit-kat's to take home (I thought they were gross but everyone else liked them).

The apple ice-cream was really good

Finally we are on our way again and reach the entrance to the park. We had to walk 1.6 km to where the monkeys were located but it was a pretty walk on a fairly flat snow-covered path.

Finally we come to where the hot spring is located, which is the reason the monkeys come to this location every day. At night they go back into the trees up the mountain.

They simply just walk around you as if you weren't even there (there are no cages or fences).

How would you like to be looking in this webcam about now?

Here is the hot spring pool that many of them relax in.

This one is drinking out of it.

As you can see it was raining instead of snowing but only lightly.

This little baby jumps over his mama.

This one was hanging out by himself outside the pool (maybe drying off?)

And then one walked right in front of me while I was bending down to take pictures (this is not zoomed at all!), I could have reached out and touched him.

This mother has her baby holding on.

And this little baby was having fun playing on the bridge.

I thought this one was making a funny face and you can also see how many people are around with the monkeys going wherever they please.

Here's that baby playing on the bridge again.

Abby got a great picture of the baby.

Down below the hot spring and the waterfall was another place by the river where a bunch of the monkeys were hanging around.

The waterfall and bridge from our view down below.

At first I thought that they were sitting on a log but it's actually a pipe. Humans actually control the temperature of the hot spring for the monkeys keeping it at about 40 degrees in the winter and about 30 degrees in the summer.

I saw several mothers with their babies nursing in a quiet(er) place.

We saw a few monkeys playing in this tree together (check out Abby's video). We are up on a deck here so we have a good view of the top of the tree.

Getting a few portraits as we head back out on the trail

We got some more hot chocolate!

A tour bus selfie!

For dinner we got some yakisoba

And steamed buns!

We arrived back at our apartment around 10pm. Below are Abby's videos:

snow monkeys in tree

baby and mama

monkey walking by

Today is March 11th, the 4th anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake. I thought I would blog about a recent trip that we made to Monkey Island, the place where we were returning from 4 years ago on the day of the earthquake. This last time, thankfully, there were no earthquakes or tsunami warnings to run from.