π΅
went to my favorite place on planet earth again today - nagano japan. specifically, jigokudani yaen-koen (hell valley monkey park).
i wrote extensively about this last year as well, seen here. it was just as incredible this year, if not better.
this will be the first blog post of the trip where all the photos are not in this blog post. i took 439 photos, 325 of which were of monkeys. after editing and review, i kept 133 of the photos, 99 of which were of monkeys. to keep this blog post from being ridiculously long, and to keep it from taking 200 years to finish uploading, i am limiting the blog post to only contain my 30 favorite monkey photos. if you want to see all of them, you will need to look at my gallery site. the reason i do it this way is because my gallery site automatically imports from my photo editing software. i dont have to download all the photos in a smaller file size and then reupload them like i do for the blog posts. i started writing this blog post at 12:45 pm and am just now posting it 2 hours later. the photo uploads take a really long time.
bullet train
this was the first of many bullet trains i will be taking this trip, and the first ever bullet train for my mom. we took the 7:52 shinkansen from tokyo station to nagano station, arriving at 9:30. we got tickets for gran class, which is like the bullet train equivalent of first class. its about 150 miles away by car. i donβt know the exact distance the train travels, but its somewhere in that neighborhood. the train reaches a maximum speed of 160mph, with 7 stops along the way.
after nagano, this train continues on to kanazawa, where i will be going on april 2. i will be taking this same train on the 2nd, just wont be getting off halfway.
i actually didnt take any photo or video on the train, which was a mistake for sure. i took several last year if you want to see those, though.
zenko-ji
this tour followed essentially the same structure as last time, with our first stop at zenko-ji temple. i am going to paste the same thing i wrote last year, because it is all still true.
our first stop was ZenkΕ-ji, a 1400 year old buddhist temple. ZenkΕ-ji is really interesting because it was built before buddhism split into multiple sects. there are actually 2 different sects of buddhism operating out of ZenkΕ-ji, JΕdo-shΕ« and tendai.
please note that i am not a buddhism expert and i am only describing what was described to me here.
many of the statues in this temple are wearing red, which i was told is because old tradition said that color red would ward off illness and evil spirits.
these little smiling statues are called jizo. and their meaning is sad but kind of beautiful. the guide explained that when a young child dies before their parents, or dies before birth, they cannot cross the river to the afterlife. the jizo are guardian deities that watch over these children and protect them from yokai, evil spirits. thus, people put red clothing on the jizo to protect them (and by extension the children) from evil spirits.
there are many jizo statues in japan, along roads, trails, shrines, temples, et cetera. they can be found all over the place.
i am not super knowledgeable in buddhism, so this is all coming secondhand from how it was explained to me. but according to the tour guide, the jizo are bodhisattva, which are people who have become enlightened, but choose to forego buddha-hood and assist others in their journey to become enlightened.
parents offer garments, toys, bibs, and the like to the jizo statue in hopes that their child will be safely guided to the afterlife.
we had about an hour at zenko-ji. i was able to get goshuin stamps for both of our books at both locations (there are 2 sects operating out of this temple).
nature
after zenko-ji, there was a brief stop at a sake tasting place, where i once again got no photos, and a stop for lunch. this year we got shabu shabu at a place right at the base of the mountain the monkey park is at. but for some reason, all my photos of this lunch turned out pretty bad, so i scrapped them all.
after lunch, it was time to trek up the mountain. my memory of this trip was much more intense than it actually was. part of that was that last year it was very icy and slippery, but this year they had just had a couple warm days and the ice had largely melted. this made the trip up much quicker and easier.
i also think my memory of this is much worse because i was 50 pounds heavier last time, and brought my whole ~20lb backpack and everything with me. the climb up is not that bad when you dont have to walk extra carefully. its mostly flat, with a couple steep incline sections.
the walk up to the monkey park is truly one of the most beautiful places i have ever been. i am certainly not the nature walk type, so iβm sure there are some who would be here and not think too much of it. but the clean mountain air, rushing water background noise, beautiful sloped forest, and loosely maintained trail through it are something to behold. i wrote last time about how it feels like time stops on this trail, and its really something else. if anyone reading this ever visits japan, i really think this walk and the reward at the end is the #1 thing to do here.
monke
we made it to the top and were finally ready to see the monkeys. this place is unique, because these are not captive animals. this place is not a zoo. these are wild monkeys, and the monkey park is just set up in a way that is appealing to them. there is a very real chance that on any given day the monkeys wont come down from their homes further up the mountain. they scatter food here occasionally, and the hot spring is extremely appealing to them when it gets cold.
this place exists because post world war 2, the area was being increasingly deforested, driving them out of their homes. this caused them to head down the mountain and pillage farmland for free food. it also caused them to venture near a local hotel that had an onsen (hot spring bath). the monkeys saw people bathing in the hot spring and decided to try it themselves. they obviously found this extremely appealing in the cold months.
rather than exterminate them, they instead thought βwhat if we make something further up the mountain more appealing than walking all the way down it to steal from farms or invade the onsen?
so an area was built specially for them. there is a large hot spring bath, and food is scattered daily for them. these wild monkeys have just learned that humans are cool, actually. they come down to the onsen of their own free will and hang out most days, especially in the winter.
there are a lot of monkeys in japan, but most of the other places you can go to see them are either zoos / enclosures, or the monkeys have not coexisted this well with humans and there are all these warnings about βdont look them in the eye, stay away, be very carefulβ etc. here, you basically only get two warnings - donβt feed them and dont have any plastic bags because they will think you are feeding them.
as i mentioned at the beginning, there are 99 photos of the monkeys, but i am only posting 30 on the blog. if you want to see everything, check out the /gallery/.
last year, the monkeys were all outside the bath. but this year, a few of them were actually bathing, which is why you can see some of them have wet fur.
on the way back down the mountain, one of the staff there pointed out a deer in the distance. these are apparently extremely rare to see here. it was very very very far away, so i am kinda impressed with my cameraβs ability to capture it.
the walk back down the trail was just as awesome as the walk up, but i was extremely tired.
back to tokyo
we were absolutely beat by this point, and we felt very out of place walking into the gran class shinkansen car with muddy shoes. i slept the entire way home, and then we just took a cab from there. i then spent 3-4 hours in bed editing all these photos and crashed for almost 12 hours.
thats the post!
γγγγΎγγ!
