Nagano

Hello, hello, hello, hi there!

Brothers having fun in the snow

Let's travel back in time to... February (eek!) when we visited Nagano, Japan. We decided to go to Nagano because, being from the Midwest, we had to check out the snow. Boy, let me tell you, it was piled up upwards of 15 ft or more on the sides of the roads and packed several feet everywhere else. It was amazing! Even more amazing, it is located less than three hours away from Tokyo, where it barely snows at all.

The first day, we traveled to Madarao Mountain Resort where we stayed for two nights. We got there late the first night, but the next day, Joe snowboarded in the fresh powder, Jackson had his first skiing lesson and Jacob and I frolicked in the snow. I was nervous to ski for a few different reasons: I haven't skied since before I was pregnant with Jackson so I was worried that I might injure myself and also, I was training for my first marathon (more on that in another post!) so I wanted to get a 15-mile run in instead. I must say, as a runner, I was spoiled this winter being able to run in the mild conditions in Tokyo. Running through snow, ice and slush is a whole different ball game! I was able to complete my run though, and the boys had a fun day in the snow.

Jackson learning how to ski

The following morning we traveled to a different part of Nagano, the prefecture (or state, as we think of it) of Nagano is quite large, so we had to take another bus/train/taxi combo to get to our next hotel. We arrived in the late morning and the kind people at the hotel drove us to the Monkey Park called Jigokudani Yaenkoen. This was the highlight of the trip. We were dropped off at the entrance of the park where then we had a 1.6km or 1 mile hike to actually see the monkeys. While this might not sound too bad, it wasn't exactly anybody's idea of fun! I must say that seeing the monkeys made it worth it though.

Jackson at the entrance of the monkey park

The path leading to the park

Almost there!

Our first glimpse of the monkeys

There's one!

So, these are wild monkeys who live in the mountains of Nagano, Japan. In the winter, they come down out of the mountains to find food (the people at this park actually feed them so they don't end up stealing from the tourists!) and relax in the natural hot springs, called onsen, in this particular park. (There are onsen all over Japan, some very close to our home in Tokyo even!) It was amazing to get to see these monkeys interact with each other and how they go about their lives in this park. For the most part, the monkeys truly ignored the humans, almost as if we were invisible. I say things like 'for the most part' and 'almost' because the one time we saw them interact with humans were with our children! The two monkeys we saw first, we thought as brothers because we know how brothers act with each other and these two were rough-housing and chasing each other and making snow fall off the trees to land on the other one. It was hilarious and they drew quite a large crows of people watching them. Our boys were laughing so hard, it made us laugh just watching them laugh and have a good time. After a few minutes, we thought the monkey brother fight was over so our boys went to leaning over the fence (below) to watch the monkeys below. Before we know it though, one monkey brother was chasing the other on the same fence! Our boys were obviously in their way and one stepped on Jacob's hand and the other one bounced off of Jackson's head! I wasn't sure what to think of at first, I was waiting to get J&J's reactions, but it happened so fast that Jacob knew one had touched his hand but Jackson didn't even know one had bounced off his head! We told him and he said, "really?!" and then they both laughed and laughed. Such a great memory for us.

Leaning over the fence where the monkey brothers were running!

Jacob afterward - all smiles!

You silly monkey brothers!

More monkeys

Another one!

Monkeys bathing in the onsen

See this handsome guy relaxing at the edge of the onsen
in his peaceful and serene state? 

These were all the people taking his picture! The monkeys really did just carry on
without letting all of the people disturb them!

This mama let me and many, many other people get
seriously close to her baby. No problem!

Jackson and Jacob got a little bored so they started
building things out of rocks. Luckily we had hand sanitizer!

One of my favorite things to do in Japan:
take pictures of people taking pictures of my kids, ha!

One monkey grooming another. They started doing this within
just a few feet from where J&J were playing and then they let
us get very close to them to take photographs.

We won't bother you, as long as we can keep building!

Time for the hike back. Thanks for all of the fun!

Enjoying a snack at a park near our hotel

Back on the Shinkansen... Time to go home!

We had a wonderful time in Nagano. We are already making plans to go back next winter to ski (all of us, this time!) and pay those silly monkeys another visit.

Thank you so much for reading. I love you.

XOL