Nagano and Jigokudani

Thursday morning and early afternoon, we wandered around Tokyo. We finally found the Loft store in Ikebukuro, and it was well worth searching for. (It was also easy to find, once we knew it occupied the top floors of the Seibu department store.) Stationery, kitchen stuff, home goods ... an Aranzi Aronzo shop (if you don't know what it is, Google it) ... Loft is just a lot of fun.

Later in the afternoon, we took the Shinkansen (aka bullet train) to Nagano. We dropped our stuff at the hotel and set out in search of food. The search didn't take long, because there was a yakitori place right across the street. (Thank you, Charlie, for learning to read kana!) The yakitori was delicious, except the chicken gizzard (I didn't like it; Charlie did). Our favorite was tsukune, which are chicken meatballs grilled at high temperature and brushed with a sweet soy-based sauce. Yum.

Friday morning we had breakfast at the hotel (we normally wouldn't do that, but the restaurant was on the 16th floor, with a 180-degree view of Nagano, and it was gorgeous. Also, a big breakfast was a good idea, since we were about to climb a mountain. Well, maybe more of a tall hill) and then got on the train to Yudanaka. From there, we caught a bus that took us to a parking lot about 2 kilometers from the Jigokudani Wild Monkey Park.

The hike to the park was not difficult, but I was thankful for the leg strength derby has given me. It was a bit of a climb! It was also gorgeous and quiet and white. 

We spotted our first monkey maybe 400 meters from the actual park entrance. It was a big male (I think), digging in the snow for something that, when he found it, appeared to be pretty tasty. It was really exciting to see him -- a wild snow monkey! Of course, what was to come was even more amazing. So many monkeys! Mothers, babies, juveniles, all ages, enjoying the hot spring together. 

I took about 200 pictures, but I am not going to post the rest until I have a chance to get home and edit them. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the monkeys above are a dad, a mom and a baby. 

We stayed for about an hour. The monkeys took absolutely no notice of us. You are not supposed to look them in the eye. I confess, I did a few times, and even then, the monkeys didn't seem to really notice or care. They would walk right past us, or sit on a fence right next to us. Many times, I was close enough to a monkey that I could have reached out and stroked its fur. And oh, man, how I wanted to. I had to remind myself that the monkey is probably much faster than I, and could have its teeth in my  hand before I had a chance to withdraw it. Plus, the rules are very clearly posted: don't touch the monkeys (hee hee), don't feed them, don't scare them. 

As we arrived back in Nagano, it was starting to snow. We watched the snow on the first part of our Shinkansen trip, and then it turned into rain by the time we got back to Tokyo. We went out for sushi, and I tried sea urchin for the first time. And the last. Yuck. Everything else was pretty good, though.