We took our time getting to breakfast this morning. We arrived down in the foyer at around 8:40am, when the breakfast finishes at 9am. This actually worked out well because most of the businessmen had eaten and already run off to join whatever rat race they're competing in for the day. We got straight to a table with no waiting, and the breakfast buffet was virtually all ours. It just so happened that it was the best Toyoko Inn breakfast of the trip.

While watching the Japanese news in the foyer we noted that Nagano had just received an identical amount of snow overnight to our home in Newcastle. 0.0mm.
There is a single mound of dirty ice/snow which is piled up on the footpath not far from the hotel, around halfway to the train station. It's become a ritual for one, or all, of us to kick it on the way past, sending snow and ice chips flying. We're gradually wearing it down. By the time we leave Nagano tomorrow, unless it snows tonight, I think we'll have the pile destroyed.

Still unsure of whether the trek into the mountains to the monkey park would be worth it, since it was a beautiful day with nothing else on the to-do list for us to explore in this region, we decided to give the monkey park a go, and I'm very glad we did.

There appears to be 2 main methods of getting to the monkey park from Nagano station. The local electric railway, and via bus. Consulting with the tourist information center at Nagano station, the bus was recommended due to the location at which it drops you off in proximity to the monkey park. Apparently there is a walking trail from the train station which is closed in winter, making the walk from the station much longer than that of the bus. Since the bus and train were similar prices and similar times, we settled for the bus, and made our way to the bus stop.

Strangely, after getting on and off trains for the past 2 weeks, riding in something which rides on rubber tyres and uses a road, and not a track was a bit of a novelty. The bus ride was largely uneventful, bus it got more interesting as we worked our way out of Nagano city. Isabelle and I were seated in the front row behind the driver, and if I needed any more evidence that the Japanese love to superheat their transport, the bus driver had a little analogue thermometer above his head, which was reading 27 or 28 degrees celcius. It was too damn hot, and on the seat I was in, the window was fixed and wouldn't open. At least those in the rows behind me had the luxury of opening a window and not suffocating.

Passing through a city filled with thousands of apple trees (bare in the winter months) we worked out that we were in the inventively named Apple City, Nakano, we started to see something that had been missing on the current trip to the mountains...snow!

After around an hour of freeway travel, and then snaking our way up a mountain road, the bus driver announced our stop, seemingly at random, and stopped the bus at the side of the road, blocking the entire road leading up the hill. A bus stop here would have been useful. Rather unceremoniously, the bus driver opened the doors, took our money and pointed us in the direction of the monkey park, as the hot air escaping from the bus began melting the snow on the footpath outside.

Snow half a meter thick or more blanketed everything around us, which for a couple of Aussie tourists came as a great novelty. The girls finally had a chance to play around in snow a meter or so thick, which was great fun. This kind of snow coverage is in my head what I was picturing Nagano city to be like.
When getting off the bus, I was assuming it would be freezing cold, but strangely it wasn't. It was quite pleasant. Honestly it was colder at the bus stop in Nagano while waiting for the bus.

We made our way towards the monkey park, which leads from the bus stop, up a narrow, icy, but relatively flat road, before making a sharp right turn, and leading up a narrower, even more icy, and not at all flat road which leads past some very photogenic houses, and into the mountains. Eventually the road, completely covered in ice and snow just seems to stop, and before you realise it you're no longer walking on the road, but rather you're just trudging through the snow along a forest track.

I expected the monkey park to be a difficult walk, but it wasn't. The initial entry into the heavily wooded forest didn't start well, with a set of steep and icy steps leading up through the snow and trees, but after those stairs, the path was just a gentle incline for the entire distance.

The path through the monkey park was either slippery ice, icy mud, or a strange mix of the two. The majority of the pathway was safe, despite the fact that in some sections it was only around a meter wide, with a fairly sheer drop on one side. Regular signs warning you about slippery and treacherous conditions were a constant reminder to be vigilant, but to be honest it wasn't too bad. It was a long walk, but it was a very pretty walk through a pine forest, with virtually nobody else around.

After around an hour of walking, which counted stopping for photos, stopping to make snowmen, and stopping so I could step in a pile of snow which appeared solid, only to sink past my knees, we arrived at the monkey park.

The monkey park itself is very pretty, at the end of a ravine with steep mountains on all sides. As you'd expect, many areas are roped off to protect both the humans and the natural fauna, so there was a fairly well defined path that you follow to enter the park, and walk around it.

For a couple of dollars each we entered the park, area itself, and were met with more people than we'd seen all day, even though the park was far from crowded.

The monkeys themselves if I'm honest, weren't all that interesting. Unlike at Arashiyama in Kyoto however during the last trip, the monkeys at this park didn't attack me. I was just more impressed with the fantastic walk through the mountains and the beautiful scenery than I was with the monkeys.

Isabelle was initially fascinated by the monkeys, and these monkeys were calm enough to simply walk up to and past the camera wielding humans as if they weren't even there. She too soon got sick of the monkeys, of which the majority were just huddled together, trying to keep from freezing.

The main event of the monkey park is undoubtedly the hot spring pool. This pool filled with volcanic hot spring water, attracts the monkeys to it so they can bathe and keep warm.
Apparently this is a fascinating natural phenomenon, but I found it more interesting in watching the humans at this pool than I did watching the monkeys.

In the hot spring pool itself, for the duration that I was there, there were 2 monkeys in the pool. They both looked warm, and fairly relaxed, but other than that, they looked exactly as you'd expect a wet monkey to look.

The other fauna that this pool seems to attract is the professional photographer, and their behavior was much more interesting. A line of 20 or so photographers standing shoulder to shoulder, some with tripods set up, all jostled for position with their eyes tightly jammed into their viewfinders, and their massive zoom lenses aimed squarely at the 2 monkeys in the pond, waiting for them to do something.

One of the monkeys picked its nose, and the sound of a thousand shutters clicking echoed loudly around the ravine. The other monkey turned its head, and again the shutters clicked nonstop for a few seconds to capture the magic.

I'm not sure if their artistic abilities and perspective was seeing something that I was missing. To me it just looked like 2 monkeys in a pool.

I was unable to get down to the poolside where the "professionals" had set up camp, so I just calmly walked to the other side of the pool, which was closer to the monkeys, and getting down to ground level, began taking photos. Looking over at the pros, I see the visible scorn and mixed looks of either condemnation or pity on their faces, because I was using a camera that didn't require a suitcase to transport it around in, and my zoom lens was less than 2 feet long.

I'm still not sure what they were expecting the monkeys to do. We spent nearly 2 hours within the monkey park itself, and the original group of primate paparazzi still hasn't moved from their positions.

And there was still only the same 2 monkeys in the pool when we left.
Does anyone really need 3000 shots of the same 2 monkeys?

After leaving the monkey pool, and spending a little bit of time down by the river, with the frankly far more numerous and vastly more interesting monkeys, we were all monkey'd out for one day, so we began the trip back down the ravine to the bus stop.

Given less than an hour to make it back, or wait an additional 90 minutes for the next bus, we picked up the pace down the icy track. But what was a gentle uphill slope on the way up is a much more friendly gentle downhill slope on the way back, so we made it back down with ease. Sufficient time in fact, for Charlotte and I to venture up the road to the nearest service station for vending machine hot chocolates.

By the time we got back to Nagano station, at 4pm in the afternoon we realised that we still hadn't had lunch, so we grabbed quick and easy bento lunchboxes and returned to the hotel to eat them, and banished the thought of trying to fit anything else into today.

Since we're leaving here tomorrow, and moving onto Takayama, Veronica packed the suitcases while I took Charlotte and Angela for one last walk around Nagano, stopping at Baskin Robbins for ice creams before calling past the starbucks for coffees for Veronica and myself, before turning in for the night.

Tomorrow probably won't be fantastic. The train journey from Nagano to Takayama is around 5 hours long, and has to go north via Toyama, or south via Nagoya, due to a great mountain range which runs between the Nagano and Takayama/Hida region. Both routes take similar time, but we'll probably select the northern route for something different. The other option is to take a train to Matsumoto, then take a bus to Takayama, but considering this will probably cost us an additional $120, since the rail passes won't cover it, and only save us maybe an hour or less, I don't think we'll be taking that option.