After a quick night in Saitama, I made my way up to Nagano, from which I was able to go to Jigokudani. This place is known for its hot springs and it’s “hellish” landscape. What it’s really known for, though, is its monkeys, which chill warm up in the hot springs. That’s right. Monkeys. Monkeys From Hell… or at the very least, Hell’s Valley.

As always, I don’t want to ruin anything by telling you too much here (since I’ll be making videos on this stuff starting next month), so I’m going to focus more on what I did / where I went, rather than all the nitty gritty details (sorry!). Hopefully seeing this will make you look forward to the real post on Jigokudani… probably happening in January, after the Cat Island episode.

After a train ride from Nagano, I took a bus to a place that was kind of sort of close to Jigokudani. It was probably only a one hour walk, but I spent a lot of time taking video and photos, so it took quite a bit longer. The trail was easy, and the weather was good, so it wasn’t all that hard getting there. Before you get to the actual monkey part, though, you run into a little village, which is basically some small houses and places to do onsen, if you want. I didn’t have time, unfortunately, but they looked pretty cool… er… hot, from what I could tell. I’d definitely recommend going early so you have some time to dip into the hot springs.

After you get here, it’s not too much further until you get to the actual monkeys. I found some monkeys here (two of them), but it was nothing compared to the amount of monkeys that were in the actual park. The cool part is that they were all pretty friendly, too (though I did get swiped at once). There were all kinds of monkeys… big and small, young and old, angry and happy, etc. They were running around doing the kinds of things that monkeys do.

Taking video and pictures of the monkeys was really easy. Although there are warnings in various places about how monkeys will tear your face off if they want to, for the most part, they’d just ignore you and you could get really close. They’d walk past me, I’d walk past them, and you can easily get within 1 or 2 feet of a monkey. Still, if you go, definitely be careful. Monkeys are monkeys, and somewhere in the back of their head they want to tear your face off, still.

The Jigokudani Livecam

There’s also this livecam that you can watch, no matter where you are, if you want to see the monkeys. I tweeted the webcam address while I was there, and a bunch of you were awesome enough to take screenshots for me. Thanks so much to all of you who helped out! There were a lot of repeats, because the webcam only refreshes every so often, but here’s one of my favorites (if you took this one, please tell me so I can cite you, I couldn’t find your tweet just now!!).

After taking a ton of monkey pictures and videos, it was time to go. Nobody was there anymore for good reason. They realized it would take a while to walk back to the bus (or they knew when the bus would come, unlike some people, aka me) and left. They also probably realized that it would get super dark if they didn’t head out already. I did not realize this, which is why I walked home in the dark.

Gaining The Power Of Longevity

I’ve always figured that if you eat an animal that lives a long time, you’ll gain its power. That’s why I went out with a friend and ate Koi (Carp) sashimi. I can feel my lifespan getting longer already.

Apparently, if you’re looking to eat Koi, the Nagano area is where you ought to do it. After eating some koi and soba, it was time for a quick sleep before heading off to the West, where I went island hopping. I think you’ll like the next couple places. Islands are always interesting.