Nagano: Day Two

When the trains started again in the morning, we again headed to Yudanaka. Unfortunately, the nice limited express train didn't start until later in the morning, so we ended up on the local. It was horrible again. When we got there, we had to wait around for a while for a bus that took us closer to the Jigokudani Monkey Park. Then we had to walk for at least 2 km, mostly on a very snowy path through the forest, until we actually got to where the monkeys are.

There were so many monkeys! They were hanging out in the forest and digging around in the snow and cuddling together by the river. And lots of them were hanging out in the hot springs! It was super fantastic; like, I've always seen things about Japanese monkeys who hang out in hot springs, and I actually got to see them! すごい！ It was very exciting, although occasionally a little scary if you accidentally looked at a monkey in the eye or if the monkeys fought with each other or if this big scary monkey who was protecting all the other monkeys walked past you.

Hiked back to the bus stop where we found that there was only, like, one bus per hour, so we had to wait for quite a while. Were luckily able to get the limited express train back to Nagano City (I slept most of the way) and then were able to get a shinkansen back home without too much waiting (I slept for most of that trip too). It was a faster shinkansen than the one we took to get there; the first one made a few stops, but on our way home, we only stopped once between Nagano and Omiya. Nice.

It was really fun to see somewhere new in Japan and a really fantastic way to finish up my holiday, but I was happy to get back home to where it was not freaking cold and snowy.