Sunday – April 5th

Easter Sunday was our day of rest. It was nice to have breakfast at the Lodge and not need to put on our ski gear and hit the mountain. We hung out at the Lodge for a couple of hours and then explored the town a little more. We walked up to the "top of town" where the cooking onsen is. The local villagers use the cooking onsen to slowly cook vegetables and onsen eggs which are semi-soft boiled eggs. It was beginning to rain so we wandered back to the Lodge for the start of the Snow monkey's tour.

The first stop on the Snow monkey tour was Sushi train. This is a great Sushi restaurant where you order your sushi via a computer ipad at your table and then it is delivered a couple of minutes later via a shinkansen to your table. The kids loved it. We ordered our fill and the got back on the bus for the drive to the monkey park

It’s a 1.6km walk to where the monkeys are through a lovely pine forest. The Snow monkeys are Japanese Macaques are the only primates to live in a place where it snows. The monkeys are able to do this by spending their time in the onsen.

The monkeys are very amusing – especially the young ones who appear to have limitless energy and delight in play fighting with their siblings (similarities with ours abound) while the parents enjoy the onsen and clean themselves. We watched the monkeys until it became too cold and then back on the bus and back to Nozawa Onsen.

We’d bought some groceries during the day and used the kitchen back at the Lodge to cook up some soba noodles with Pork. Not as good as the local restaurants but the kids enjoyed a night in.

Monday – April 6th

Monday was our last day in Japan. We were flying out till later that evening so we had the morning in town then caught the bus and shinkansen back to Tokyo. We dropped our bags off at Tokyo station and walked around Ueno and Ginza before we caught the Narita express out to the airport and onto our flight home. It had been a great 10 day holiday – we can’t wait to come back