The Japanese Alps – snow monkeys and naked baths

We planned a visit to the Japanese Alps into our itinerary after Jemma's brother told us we had to see them. Our first stop was Nagano, which was a little out of the way, and took us a while to get to from Kyoto. We arrived at Nagano station in the pouring rain and walked for about half an hour without finding the hostel. In the end, I waited in a bank with the rucksacks whilst Jemma went off to try and find it. When she came back 40 minutes later, soaking wet, she still had not found it but had a good idea of where it might be. Before we set off on a trek to find it, we saw a MOSBurger (now my favourite fast food chain ever) and went there for tea. I had a curry sauce burger. We eventually found the hostel, 1166, tucked away down a little side street and the owner let us in. It was basically someone's house. The young girl (32) had set the house up as a hostel and she had great reviews on hostelworld because of how helpful she is with planning your travels. I t was a typical Japanese style house, with one western toilet and one shower. It also had a Japanese toilet. The dorms had bunks but the mattresses, were paper thin (standard in Japan) and the pillow was terrible. Needless to say I didn't get the best night's sleep that night and I was freezing. When I needed the toilet, I had to creep down the narrow staircase to the western toilet next to the kitchen. The good thing about the hostel was that she cooked us a typical Japanese dinner for £5 (hot pot) and we sat round the table with the other guests from Belgium, Singapore, Germany and Japan and learnt about Japanese culture from the owner and her friend. They showed us a funny clip on youtube about how to eat sushi (clip) and answered all of our questions. We got along quite well with the other guests and the owner even gave us free alcohol (sake and wine). Jemma and the German boy went out to buy some suntory whisky (as featured in Lost in Translation) and they ended up drinking the whole bottle between them. As there was only one shower, I had to wait about 45 mins for our Japanese room mate (who looked about 8!) to finish in the shower before I could go in.

We went to bed at midnight, and set our alarm for 6am, ready to get up for a trip to see the snow monkeys the next day.

Hot pot night at the hostel in Nagano

The next day we got up at 6am and caught a train to the mountains and then a bus. By 10am, after having walked up a snowy mountainside and taken in the lovely views, we eventually made it to the monkey park, which is basically a clearing in the forest with a hot spring in it where the monkeys bathe! It is amazing to see the monkeys running around in their natural habitat. I had never heard of monkeys that live in the snow before. There are hundreds of them and they can get quite lively, fighting with each other and chasing each other about. There were babies and adults and lots of monkeys in the onsen (hot spring) taking a bath. I was quite scared at some points as we were warned not to look them in the eyes otherwise they might attack. We didn't witness any attacks whilst we were there but the Belgian girl told us that one had leapt out of the water to go for her when she was there.

One of the baby monkeys

After a couple of hours looking at the monkeys and taking pictures, we headed back down the mountain to do something we had been told we must do whilst in Japan: take an onsen.

An onsen is a hot spring where Japanese people bathe naked: (click for description of onsen)

We were first told about this by a British girl in Fiji who raved over it and reckoned it was no problem getting naked once you were there because the Japanese didn't bat an eyelid. The same thoughts were echoed by the Belgian couple in our hostel the night before. I however, was not so sure. Europeans don't seem to understand the British fear of getting naked, in fact they laughed at me when I told them what a big thing it was for me to do. Even typing this now, I am cringing thinking back to it. But hey, if Lonely Planet says you've got to do it, you've got to do it.

It's basically a public bath, where you go in, strip off (no towels allowed – we were told off in Japanese by an old woman when we tried to slip into the bathing area with our towels around us). Before you get in, you have to sit in a row with a load of naked Japanese women and wash yourself with the soap and shampoo provided. There is a bucket that you have to fill with hot water and then pour it over yourself. Then, you are allowed to get into the bath, which is usually outside, naked. It was quite a traumatic experience for me personally as I am very modest. A lot of people who do it (i.e. the Brits in Fiji) come out raving about it saying how great it is, but I'd rather just get in a jacuzzi with my batha on. Anyway, I've done it now, so nobody can say that I'm not embracing Japanese culture!

A bit like the onsen we went in

After the onsen, we got the train back to Nagano and had another MOSBurger. Then we went for our daily trip to Seven Eleven (I now, sadly, sing the theme tune as we walk in). We decided to be adventurous and bought some Tomato chocolate. Yes, that's right, tomato flavoured chocolate! How could I fail to like it when it combines my two favourite things?? Chocolate and tomoato sauce?? It was disgusting. But, I'm glad we tried it.

That night I was really tired so I stayed in next to the fire, whilst Jemma went our drinking with some Aussies from our dorm. Again, I had another terrible, freezing nights sleep on the cold, hard bed and woke up ready to get out and get to a new comfortable hostel.

Our next destination was Hakuba, which, according to Jemma's brother is 'the best place in the world and she would bring shame upon her family if she didn't go there'. You're meant to go there to ski and we did want to do this, however due to poor planning, we realised that a)we wouldn't have enough time to ski as we had only booked one night there and b) I wasn't actually insured for skiing.

Never mind, we still set off, on the 3 hour journey to get there and got there in the late evening, leaving us just enough time to chill out in the lovely, modern, hostel/chalet and do our washing. After I had pressed start on the washing machine, with all of our clothes in, except the t shirt and shorts we were wearing, I read a sign that said the dryer took 2 hours, so our plans to go out for dinner were scuppered. Luckily the hostel had a good stock of ready made curry meals in boxes so we made ourselves one of those and relaxed in the cosy lounge. We both said we would have loved to have stayed longer in Hakuba and actually go skiing as it is such a nice place, however, we had to leave the next morning as our friend Yoshie from New Zealand, had contacted us out of the blue and offered us a bed for the night. We were very keen on taking up her offer and are now currently on a train, making our way to Yoshie's sister's house in Yokohama (near Tokyo) where we will stay for a night and experience a typical Japanese family home!

For many more pictures of monkeys and snowy mountains, please click here: Japanese Alps