After this we toiled up the hill to the hotel we visited last night. Daniel, a young American man who was brought up in Japan and spoke fluent Japanese, had offered to be our tour guide for the day so we set off with him in the hotel Volvo to the home of the snow monkeys - about 15 minutes away.
We parked in a very low key carpark - more a patch of snow - and began our 1.6 km winding hike to the thermal pools. The path was slippery and muddy and took a great deal of concentration, but the scenery was magnificent. We were walking through a forest of snow-covered trees full of picturesque views but not many handrails.
After what seemed like a long time, and after being passed by a group of little old Japanese men and women striding along, we began to smell sulphur and came across our first thermal springs and our first monkeys.
There were about 50 of them, just running around, chattering to each other, picking tiny scraps of nuts and God knows what else out of the snow to eat and jumping in and out of the water.
The signs said not to go too close to them or stare into their faces but the monkeys ran next to us and around our feet, as if we were inanimate objects. They were totally unafraid and totally uninterested in us.
The ones in the springs were like people relaxing in a pool, chatting to each other, and the babies jumped in and out and splashed their parents and generally behaved like kids at the beach.
Here is a picture of us at the pools, taken by Tour Guide Daniel -
After this, we made our way back along the treacherous path to the car - but very satisfied with our adventure.
Our next stop was the Peace Buddha - an 80 foot high Buddha built to represent peace. It was a copy of a previous Peace Buddha at that site which had been melted down to make bullets during WWII! No irony there.
After this, Daniel took us to lunch at his favourite ramen cafe - and we had the best noodles and gyoza I've had for ages - and it was just a cheap little roadside cafe too.
While we were inside, it started snowing, which was truly amazing! The snow was quite heavy too and lasted most of the rest of the day.
The rest of our tour consisted of a visit to a sake factory, along with some tastings, of course, and then a walk around Shibu Onsen - a town of mineral baths, frequented for centuries by Japanese people for their healthful properties. All of this walk was conducted in the falling snow, which made everything ten times more interesting.
Once the tour was over and we got back to our hotel room, we decided we desperately needed to do some washing. The only place to do that was a local laundromat - which looked quite close on the map but which turned out to be down a confusing set of streets in the snow and darkening afternoon light. It was like a miracle to eventually find the place after twenty minutes of wandering.
The trip back was through fresh snow and we left our own special set of marks.
Hope you all had boots. Cold feet in the snow are no fun. Those monkeys know how to have a good time
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