Japanese Snow Monkeys in Winter

Japanese Snow Monkeys in Winter

exotic beautiful Japan and our visit to the 
snow monkeys this looks like fun and it is so stay watching for a few more seconds we’ve 
been to a lot of places but Japan is exotic stunningly beautiful and the food and the people 
are wonderful add to that it is 99% totally safe this was our third visit and we spent a month in 
Japan this time this chapter covers a visit by us to the famous Japanese snow monkey pool which is 
located in the forest outside the pretty town of Nagano situated in the Japanese elps we are very 
experienced world travelers our plan here is to give you the details and this info will make 
your travel simple and enjoyable when you go i’ve already spoken too much so let’s immediately 
cut to the chase and go to the next chapter in this timeline which contains the best footage 
of the snow monkeys in and around the thermal hot pool this includes feeding time if just 
seeing the monkeys is your primary interest then let’s go there now and I I will explain the 
other chapters as we go because if you’re really keen to visit Japan there are special travel tips 
and money savers for you in the following chapters [Music]   chapter two monkeys in the pool here we are 
walking into the lower area we’ve walked up the access path which is about 1.5 km note the 
steam guys are straight ahead the onson to the left and the concrete the steep concrete steps 
to the entry gate on the right there are monkeys down here but the hot pool is still up the valley 
a bit note the stow chains on the motorbike very clever addition they should put a fleet of these 
together and hire them out but again maybe not there would have been 30 or so people in the 
area around the pool and there were originally only six or 10 monkeys in the pool but that 
constantly changes several monkeys wandering around the pool and at best guess another 20 or 
30 loitering in different spots the pool at the top end is quite hot and most monkeys did not 
go up there but it drops about 10° to the far end and that’s where most of them are the pool is 
not very deep as the monkeys only want to wander and soak and not do laps not all of the monkeys 
go into the water like cats some like water and some don’t they all come and go and don’t pay 
you any attention at all a mixture of age with some quite young babies in the group who caused a 
bit of a stir by annoying some of the adult males most monkeys are not tolerant of being annoyed 
or tormented and the McCorks are no different even to their own young but the young can be 
testy as well as you’ll see further in the video you have to accept that this isn’t Disneyland 
so you have no control over what you’re going   to see or what is going to happen we may 
have been lucky but in the main everyone got a chance to do their photography because 
people move around the various vantage points around the pool for the different angles 
so even with the number of people there   it worked well it helps that the Japanese 
visitors are very considerate of others oh my god while we were there the monkeys were fed 
by the attendant that’s the guy with the   blue bucket and we suddenly had a lot 
more monkeys appearing out of nowhere mixing in and around us my guess is about 120 
monkeys in total like most wild animals there is a fair bit of argy bargy and shrieking 
over the food as the supply dwindles there is fighting and biting and screaming and 
chasing each other which is fun to watch none of this goes on in the pool because in 
feeding time they all get out of the pool i didn’t see you [Music]   keep your eyes on the stone terraces up the slope 
above the pool as there are some great arguments over the food that is there so if you visit keep 
your cameras ready for action in that area the pool would normally be devoid of monkeys at this 
time once the food supplies taper off a group of them will return to the pool and the usual antics 
of waiting around and grooming grooming each other resumes and rotates by the time 1 p.m came around 
we had seen what we needed to see and filmed what was available and we headed back to the bus stop 
we arrived at the return stop just after 2:00 p.m and the bus came shortly after and we were back 
at the bus stop right behind Nago train station at about 3:20 p.m in the next chapter let’s talk 
about saving you some money when doing this travel is expensive and only by perfect planning will 
you avoid poor outcomes that burn your money to make it easy for you to navigate I’ve divided 
this video into nine individual chapters you can do them in any order in the timeline below try 
fast forward or fast backwards if you like this video then please take a moment to subscribe to 
our travel channel and thanks for taking the time to visit the channel here’s the subscribe button 
just click on it and it all happens automatically the next chapter chapter 3 covers getting 
into the park itself from the bus stop at the street this is critical to understand if you 
are not on a tour if you are not interested in that then skip to chapter 5 where we have all 
of our surplus video of the monkey pool visit chapter 3 independent tourists 
safely getting into the snow monkey park be aware it is a non-paved think snow and mud 
1.5 kilometer walk-in from the park entry point to arrive at the monkeys and that initial entry 
point is about 400 m uphill from the bus stop on our visit it was a fine clear day it was cold 
at about -3° but can be -8 to -10° when we were there it had only been lightly snowing so there 
was not deep snow the path was still a bit of a quagmire in parts in other parts it was frozen 
and icy and quite dangerous unless you had the right footwear on the slope off the edge is quite 
a fall we were wearing krampons which are slide-on ice cleat overlays to our serious cold weather 
waterproof shoes and had no issues anywhere krampons were available for purchase at the 
entry to the path but I’d bring them with you as the steep uphill Ashefelt road in from the 
bus stop was covered in slippery ice for about 200 m and that was even before you got to the 
gate to the entry path falling over in snow and mud onto hard frozen ground is the easiest way to 
totally hijack your holiday and burn serious money we are both reasonably fit and were dressed 
for the weather but with slow people on the path and the mucky conditions it took us an 
hour to walk into the pool where the monkeys were i’ve read reports on people visiting here 
in the summer months with very few monkeys in attendance and the whole place like a mudbath but 
I’ve seen some great summer video footage as well remember that the monkeys are wild and 
normally forage in the surrounding areas   for food i therefore have to assume that the 
natural food supply would be more abundant in the warmer months than in winter in addition 
they are fed several times a day a variety of grain by the park attendants so when it’s winter 
they have two reasons to hang around the hotring that is the warm water and a free feed if I 
was a monkey I’d stay for a deal like that this is a unique experience i’ve walked 
with wild lions in Africa and these are wild McCor monkeys they are definitely not 
tame do not try to touch them and definitely do not attempt to feed them or tease them 
the ongoing survival of this attraction is dependent on the monkeys not being too integrated 
with humans here we are arriving at the bus stop you’ll immediately notice how flash and elegant 
this is but it’s Japan it’s beautifully clean felt slab and the side office to one side that acts as 
a ticket office and on the other side is a Roman museum which is a bit of a laugh as it contains 
almost no Roman items at all walk away from the bus tending uphill turning to the right and the 
Ashefeld Road continues up the hill the day we were there the first 100 meters or so was okay but 
then turned to a sheet of ice that even extended out off the ashefelt so there was no way to avoid 
walking on it people were having a lot of trouble walking on this and you will need ice spikes on 
your shoes if you’re contemplating doing this you can see the ice on the road in front of the 
shops and it got worse as you went because it was only minus 3 in the morning and had warmed up 
a bit by early afternoon the ice had melted and solved the problems by about noon but that was no 
help to people trying to walk up this road early in the morning also remember it can be minus 10 
here and the ice will not melt if that is the case note the lady in the hut who nods and bows to me 
as I walked by i just gave her a little smile and a nod of my head and the Japanese always 
super polite respond but don’t overdo it note the banner across the park entry and look 
at the very professional concrete path and steps that run up the hill and create an illusion of 
a nice path all the way to the pool that mirage lasts about 30 m and reality bites as you will see 
the path never turned to solid ice nor did it ever get a chance to dry out it was just wet and sloppy 
but not a problem if you dressed for it so leave your Gucci loafers at home note the soft muddy 
outer path edges and the fall off the edge of the path in places this is deadly serious and anywhere 
it would be a serious event to fall off the edge it was not until I put this video together did 
I realize how cavalier a lot of people were to walking in the soft mud along the edge i 
would never do that all the same I found this refreshing i live in Australia in what I 
refer to as a cotton wool society governments at home are so over the top on safety i am 
surprised they allow us to breathe the air the other thing that surprised me was the young 
child on the path all alone this was a section that was dangerous and here is a child of four or 
5 years of age running around unsupervised i don’t support cotton wool upbringing of children 
but this was a step too far even for me i deliberately left out of the video the walk 
through the lower section and the steps up and the ticket office as they were covered in an 
earlier chapter and you’ll see that with the people on the bridge if you are physically 
up to this it is quite enjoyable and I hope you’ve enjoyed watching this we certainly 
did enjoy going there and walking this path chapter 4 some money warnings i will cover here some very important 
instructions and advice for foreigners visiting this place there are different things you need 
to consider and plan for depending on the time of year that you visit your level of fitness 
and the prevailing conditions so please check the weather forecast and dress for the conditions 
but coming here in winter is the buzz and that is what I’ll deal with i’m told that the majority 
of visitors are like us doing a day trip out of Nagono but there are also people doing 
day trips on the Shinkansen’s out of Tokyo we are very experienced independent travelers and 
have been all around the world and I personally would not do this Tokyo day trip as in such an 
arrangement there are too many moving parts that can go wrong or travel arrangements you can miss 
or trains or buses that can be full and you would have wasted all that large wad of shinkansen money 
for nothing if you want to come up from Tokyo then catch the train up stay the night in Nago there 
are some good hotels and excellent restaurants and then do the monkey park early the next day and 
late in the afternoon catch the shinkans and back to Tokyo later on in this video I will give you 
some more information around that we visited this location in full winter it had only been lightly 
snowing in the days before we went there and none on the day of our visit it was a fine beautiful 
day but the air temperature was -3° we stayed two nights at the JR Hotel at Nageno Station and 
it was pretty good with excellent attentive staff we came back from the park picked up 
our checked luggage from the hotel   and walked to the train station which 
is right next door to the hotel and caught the shinkansen back to Tokyo and 
arrived at Tokyo station around 5:00 p.m [Music] be aware that you don’t have to take a guided 
tour to come to Gio Kadani but you need to be organized the advantage of an organized tour is 
you know you’ll get there but you pay a lot for that privilege at the time of making this video 
an organized tour from Nago was costing around $230 AUD that’s Australian dollars per person 
compare this against buying the park ticket for $42 plus the bus return for $35 making a total 
for the visit of $77 Australian that is a saving of $153 Australian which translates into around 
$105 US per person so if four of you are going you’re going to spend another $420 uh going on 
a tour versus the way we did it that’s up to you the organized tour operators throw in a visit to 
the Saki Brewery and the Zenoji Temple both of which are free entry and easily found on foot if 
that pulls your chain and I suggest you do both of those um places as they are very very interesting 
we chose to pre- buy the tickets to the park from our hotel and catch the local bus to the park i 
think it included the bus ticket with the park entry on some combined deal so some more money 
was saved if you can still get that deal you can take a train and then a bus but I saw that as 
more risk with things going wrong than just using one bus what can go wrong well my usual answer is 
anything our bus was scheduled to leave at 8:30 a.m and we were at the stop number 23 just behind 
the main train station at 8:00 a.m this was right next door to our hotel and there were already more 
than 50 people in the line in front of us i asked the attendant as to the seating capacity of the 
bus and he said 50 people yep there you have it fortunately for us they had an extra bus on that 
day that arrived at around 8:40 a.m and it took about 1 hour to get to the bus stop at a most 
unusual Roman museum near the park i don’t know why this surprised me as I always expect to find 
a Roman museum at a monkey park in the back blocks of Japan the irony is that the museum hardly 
has any Roman items at all in its collection if there had not been the extra bus we would have 
been first in line for the next bus that left at around 9:10 a.m but you’re now 1 hour extra 
into the day and a lot more people enter the park in that hour remember the early bird gets 
the monkey so plan to stay ahead of the crowds so we were walking up to the entry to the park 
at around 9:45 a.m and there was a good crowd of people ahead of us we then walked up the access 
path and arrived at the pool at around 10:50 a.m chapter six a unique offer that 
costs nothing so pay attention we shoot a lot of video every day we only 
use about 15 to 20% of what we shoot we pull out the best footage edit and massage 
it and that goes into the main story but what about the remaining 80% we will put all 
of our monkey visit footage into chapter 6 this will be the the whole lot and will 
be raw footage and has not been in any way edited it’s hard to say that isn’t 
it edited so if this really interests you you could have another hour of unedited 
monkey business in chapter 6 to entertain you maybe bye beautiful sauce wow you look
like you feet come on feeding tongue foreign come
on come on [Music] yeah excuse me excuse me beautiful heat heat look at this [Music] [Music] this
one heat heat [Music] [Music] we’re doing it [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] moving [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] i’m not sure [Applause] people wonderful i was like They need to go that was amazing that was quiet thank you coming
up it’s I think this Don’t believe beautiful yeah looks like a good I have Okay okay wow heat thank you [Music] are you Yeah I did heat heat okay fire yeah heat heat heat heat the next chapter is a very 
short history on the park this is a very short video so why not stay 
and just see how this place came about [Music] chapter 7 the history how this place 
came to be the story goes that back in the late 1950s these monkeys were 
becoming quite a pest the local farmers had problems with them attacking their 
fruit trees and were shooting the monkeys the local onen had problems with the monkeys 
taking over the onson’s hot baths from a health perspective it’s a dumb idea to share a hot 
bath with a wild animal who will use the pool for a toilet but I see that as being offered go 
figure as such due to its steep mountains and the smell of sulfur emitting from the hot springs 
that bubble to the surface in the valley har marveled at the monkeys and from that point onward 
became entwined in their future and this story chapter eight the overview also called the 
wrap the snow monkeys in winter are a blast but go well prepared two we like Nago it 
is a great town to walk and explore and worth an extra day or two three the 
Zenoji Temple is quite stunning four there is a Saki brewery just beside the 
temple that is worth a look and a taste five just down the main street left hand side 
away from the temple going back towards town is a cluster of restaurants that are great five 
some good jazz music bars are to be found in [Music] town h chapter nine a bit about us and what is 
coming in brand new video content we are based in Brisbane Australia which is today a very pretty 
river city with a population just under 2 million residents and as such offers all the amenities 
of a big city brisbane has beautiful natural surrounds and is well worth a visit if you are 
coming to Australia to entice you we’ll be posting Brisbane and Envy’s YouTube videos over the next 
year we are thinking of producing some Australia East Coast road trip itineraries for tourists as 
well we have been self-employed business people for most of our lives and have been to a lot of 
terrific places around the globe and unfortunately did not video much of it some like our Cuba 
Russia China Africa and South American trips can never be repeated due to political unrest let 
us know in the comments if a compilation video is of interest from the still images we have from 
these travels and we’ll see what we can do we have plans for a series of local travel videos 
named 488 fantasies but that’s not what you may think for the curious do a Google search with just 
488 in the search bar and you’ll get the drift we individually walk all the places we shoot no 
useless high drone shots or unrelated timewasting clickbait photos of pretty young girls that have 
no relevance or connection to the vision we have driven thousands of kilometers walked 1 million 
steps to get this information to you a drone shot at 500 m high is rarely of any use in judging 
the real appeal of a small old town in Europe we have a high standard of living but are 
judicious with our travel spending we don’t see the sense in expensive five-star hotels where 
the room is only used six to 8 hours at night but we do use five-star adulton only cruise lines we 
seek apartments with built-in laundry facilities and kitchens and look for on-site parking to 
protect our rental car from damage or theft we are value seekers and not cheapy budget tourists 
we will over 2024 2025 develop a website at dubdubdubdestinationdetails.com.au that will 
work in conjunction with our YouTube channel we’ll produce local and international videos 
past itineraries maps and course notes that eventually will be available for free but only to 
our subscribers so keep a lookout for this to be added also only for our subscribers we will offer 
a few times a year a live video meeting with us to go over and provide assistance with people’s 
travel plans if we have knowledge and experience with their destination so it would be like a 
personal question and answer session and will be filmed live we look forward to your comments 
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An in-detail presentation of our recent visit to the Japanese Snow Monkeys in Nagano. This features (1) Getting to the Snow Monkey Park (2) how to get in to the monkey pool (3) A lot of Monkey Video to watch (4) How to save a lot of money in the cost of your visit. (The History of the park) and what is coming next from us in new videos.
__________
00:00 Intro
0:29 – Chapter 1. What are we doing in this video.
1:05 – Chapter 2. Monkeys in the Pool
8:52 – Chapter 3. Getting into the Monkey park.
16:05 – Chapter 4. Money Warnings.
18:20 – Chapter 5. Save some money.
22:29 – Chapter 6. More Monkey Videos.
53:12 – Chapter 7. The History
54:10 – Chapter 8 The Wrap
55:16 – Chapter 9 Who are we – the 5 year plan