I still have a log of photos from my holidays taken few weeks ago.
Today let's go to Nagano prefecture. We stayed at a pension near the Myôkô-Kôgen station (about 15/20mn by car).
Been still autumn, no snow yet in the area.
Getting out of the megapole Tokyo-Yokohama was quite refreshing I must say.
The family pension was close to a golf course and ski pistes (ski season starts in late December if I don't mistake).
A on the map below. Here is the pension HP : ShoFu Sha.
Now let's go to visit the monkeys!
This monkey park is surrounded by onsen (spa).
It is called the Jigokudani Monkey Park (地ç„谷野猿公苑 Jigokudani Yaen KÅen).
And it seems that not only monkeys take their bath outside :)
Warnings in different languages, the French part is almost perfect!
And these are the first monkeys I met on my way ;)
Ms seems not so happy I took this shot...
As you can see they are not really parked but free to move anywhere, been raised in there, I guess they don't go away often though...
First time I've been so close of free wild animals! They are mostly calm, but still sometimes there are some fights between males (we can some scar faces..). They are wild animals with good teeth so better not to bother them too much anyway!
There was quite many of them, I mean the monkeys, few visitors also...
A photographer with a cool lens, I wished I had one like this at this time.
But as I said we could go very close from the monkeys (as long as we would not excite them) and managed to take some decent shots.
Yes, my family adapted quickly to our new environment :
Links :
Official homepage of the Monkey Park.
The live web camera to watch them : Real time monkey onsen ! (you can click on the previous hours (left column) to see them if they don't appear at the moment, check around 10:00 am you won't miss them)
The monkey face image was from here : monkey face button.