We got up at oh-dark-thirty this morning to make it on time to the pick-up location for our trip to Nagano (site of the 1998 Winter Olympics). Factoring in rest stops, the bus ride to the prefecture northwest of Tokyo was scheduled to take about five hours. Heavy traffic and snow squalls slowed us down, though, so it was nearly 11:30 when we reached our first stop, Jigokudani Monkey Park.
Jigokudani is located in the mountains of central Japan, and because its elevation is 850 m, there is snow cover for nearly one-third of the year. Fresh snow was falling today, adding to the twelve inches or so that were already on the ground. We had a 1.6 km (1 mile) walk from the bus parking area to the park entrance, which took us well over half an hour, partly because of the snowy and somewhat treacherous path, but mostly because we paused so often to take in the beauty and peaceful silence of the snow-blanketed landscape.
Near the park’s entrance we began to see steam rising from numerous vents and hot springs, which helped to give the area its name, “Hell Valley.” Wild snow monkeys (Japanese macaques) live in the surrounding forest, living on the abundant leaves and fruits found there. In the winter, however, they have difficulty finding enough food, and come to the valley to forage. Their visits are encouraged by park rangers who provide regular feedings of grain throughout the winter. The monkeys come out of the woods each morning, and spend the day in the park, eating and relaxing in the hot springs, then return to the woods in the late afternoon to bed down for the night. They walk unobstructed through the grounds of the park, paying absolutely no attention to the humans who have come to watch them bathing in the onsen. Visitors are warned not to bring any food into the park, not to try to touch the monkeys, and not to make eye contact with the monkeys (this is seen as a challenge to the social hierarchy, and the monkeys will attack), but are otherwise free to mingle freely with the macaques. As you can imagine, being so close to wild monkeys, especially monkeys bathing in a hot spring in the middle of a beautiful, snow-covered valley, turns everyone into a photographer, and it’s sometimes hard to get a clear shot of the monkeys without capturing someone else’s camera lens in the background. You can see what I mean if you check out the park’s live cam—a photo is taken every hour from the park’s opening at 0800 until its close at 1600. In the menu on the left side of the page, click on the numbers in the far left column to see today’s hourly photos—the numbers in the right-hand column are yesterday’s photos.
After communing with the monkeys, we returned to the bus to travel across the prefecture to Matsumoto Castle. Because we were behind schedule, we didn’t have as much time as we would have liked at this 400-year-old national treasure. Most structures of the castle, including the residences, are gone, but the tenshu (donjon, or main fortified, tower) has been preserved. From the outside, it looks to be five stories tall, but the hidden third floor actually gives it six stories on the inside. We were required to remove our boots and don ill-fitting slippers before entering the frigid tower to explore all six floors. Signs in English pointed out various features of the tower, all designed to help warriors protect the castle from enemy attacks. Windows were specially constructed depending on the type of weapon to be used at that location, be it stones, arrows, or firearms. Wide hallways allowed samurai in full armor to run throughout the tower, but I am baffled by the staircases they used to get from one floor to another. They are the narrowest and steepest stairs I have ever tried to climb. Combine the trip hazard of the slippers we were wearing with low-hung solid wood beams and the polished, slicker-than-ice bamboo handrails we had to hold while juggling cameras and bags containing our boots, and you have a recipe for a good old American lawsuit. I don’t know how armor-clad samurai navigated these stairways with any speed at all—if I’d been defending the castle, the enemy would have time to swim the moat, tear down the gates, and burn the whole place to the ground before I got from the staging room on the second floor to the stone-dropping windows of the first floor.
As luck would have it, we were able to close out our evening at the castle just as the warriors did in times of peace; standing in moon-viewing wing of the tower, watching the full moon rise over the mountains to the east.
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