Category: Life in Japan

Strands of paper cranes hanging at a shrine in the hills near Nagano.

Louise Bourgeois’ spider sculpture at the new Roppongi Hills complex in Tokyo.

One of the great things about having overseas visitors is the chance it offers for hitting some of the obvious tourist destinations that I might otherwise leave unexplored. I’ve been here in Nagano for almost a year now and have never made the trip up to Jigokudani Monkey Park to see the famous “snow” monkeys.
Yesterday, while my step-mom, Sheri, was off lunching and shopping with a group of hung over young ladies, the guys (myself, Geoff and my father) drove to the narrow valley an hour north of Nagano to see the “Monkey Onsen.”
The monkeys live in the hills around the area, but now spend most of their time in the valley where they are kept well-fed. In the winter, they bathe in man-made pools full of warm hot spring water. Turns out they also bathe in the summer, as well, but mostly to grab the seeds that are occasionally scattered into the pool.

Since it was a national holiday, I was expecting more people. But the hundreds of monkeys easily outnumbered the fifty or so visitors. The monkeys pretty much ignore human visitors, wandering right past people. The only warnings are no touching, no eye contact and no feeding.
There is also a human hot springs and lodge about 300 meters down the valley, and on the day we visited half a dozen men were lounging in the outdoor pool in the buff, pretty much directly under the viewing platform for the monkeys. Not surprisingly, the monkeys were getting all the attention — cute, fuzzy animals are much more charming than wrinkled old men sitting in a tub.
By the way, it’s worth taking a look at the park’s website, if only to see amazingly garbled translations that end up like this:

The excrements of the monkey on the snow are figured a spit dumpling, which like adulterate sawdust and fiber, because of the monkey eats some kinds of rind and bud mainly.

There’s also a live web cam, which the little guy below was keen to appear on.

Today is Children’s Day, a national holiday in Japan. Although the current name of the holiday is not gender-specific, the holiday has traditionally been a festival for boys (there is a girls’ festival in March that isn’t a national holiday). On Children’s Day, carp flags — symbolizing strength, determination and long life — fly outside many homes.
Driving through the hills near Japan’s northern alps yesterday, we came across several long collections with dozens of the carp flags stretched across valley and rivers. The flags above were just outside of Hakuba.

Last Monday and Tuesday a block of Chuo-dori street was decorated with various flower petals, wood chips, and white and black stones. I went on Tuesday with my mother and, it being a holiday, the place was jam packed with sightseers. This is the second year Nagano has held what they’ve called Infiorata. In order to keep all the petals in place, a team of workers wandered throughout the design spraying what I hope was just water. And a few of them had giant tongs to return to their proper place those petals that were blown in the wind.

As part of the Go-kai-chyou ceremony here in Nagano, there are flowers everywhere along Chuo-dori, the main street that leads to Zenkoji Temple. A handful of the arrangements include little miniature scenes of everyday life, like a wedding party made up of the seven dwarfs. Who knew Grumpy was such a ham?