Monkeys and Snowflake Spa Day

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Geo: 36.7425, 138.417

We woke up the next morning barely in time for breakfast. It was more kaseki madness, and it came with delicious legit oyakodon (one our favorite Japanese dishes back home) and sashimi! Plus a billion other things.

More importantly, we woke up to MAGIC. What's funny is a week ago I was checking the weather, and thought I saw snow on a live webcam of the Shibu area (yup, that's how intently I plan). Then I second guessed myself and thought it was okay, no snow. We misunderstood, through a language barrier, that there was only only one shuttle headed up to the monkey park. Apparently it was 9:10am that it was to leave, and it was already 8:50am. So by the time we threw on the warmest clothes we could find, downed a cup of coffee and ran back to the lobby, it was exactly time to leave.. And that's when we realized it was snowing. It was BEAUTIFUL.

The hotel shuttle was a drop off only. We walked the fairly level trail with snowflakes fluttering around us. I was in heaven. I've been in the snow many times but I can only recount one other time in my life where it was actually snowing around me. So this was magic. The trail wasn't bad. Only occasionally there were crazy gale force winds that would scream down the mountain, knocking all the snow off the trees at us. Felt like a blizzard at those moments! Otherwise, it was fine. 😊

The park itself with monkeys scurrying everywhere was neat. At one point a young little monkey got super close to me, like a foot- I was taking a picture- and a staff member told me to step back. They're not supposed to be aggressive and they're used to humans so I asked why- do they steal stuff or bite? He had trouble communicating why. So I dunno. 😊 I tried to keep back but a few more times they ran up to me. And I mean right by me and these things are STEALTHILY QUIET. We took lots of pictures. At one point the staff threw in food to entice the monkeys into the onsen. Only one monkey took the bait lol.

After half an hour with it still snowing, we headed back. We were all pretty cold. Surprisingly not wet, though. Just wasn't enough snow to soak us, not even our shoes. I was grateful for that because after Tokyo I had to wear flip flops for a day while my shoes dried. On the way back we passed by a cafe selling hot food and drinks. Chris got a hot chocolate and I had some amazing hot mulled wine on my walk back. The bus back is infrequent and we had just missed it. It was either stand at the bus stop for an hour in the snow, or walk back in the snow for 30min. So we walked, and it really wasn't that bad. I was just on cloud nine from the "adventure". :D

When we got back, we all retreated to various onsen for an hour before meeting back up for lunch. Me, Chris, Eric and Beth sat in our open air private room onsen with snowflakes falling down on us. Full disclosure, that has been a long time fantasy of mine- hot tubbing outside while its snowing. Never expected it to happen in Japan so I can check that one off my bucket list!

Finding lunch after proved to be harder than we thought. It must be a rural thing but we've found that most places expect you to either make reservations ahead of time or they just run out of food fast. Even if they're "open". So, after two failed restaurants we found a third that was open, actually had food and could seat all of us. Their specialty was Soba and Udon. Chris ordered Kama-Age Udon, a fresh boiled udon that you dip into a sauce as you eat. I ordered Tsukimi Udon. Tsukimi means "moon watching", and the raw egg they add on top represents the moon. Both dishes were very good! Normally I get squeamish about raw eggs but I haven't gotten sick yet! We also tried yakitori (regular chicken) and karaage (fried chicken)- the yakitori was delicious but the karaage was even better.

One of neat aspects of Shibu town is it's series of 9 public onsen. You can buy a special towel in town, and then get it stamped at each of the onsen. It makes a unique souvenir. As far as I know, the public onsen are for guests of the hotels within Shibu. Our hotel gave us special keys to get inside each one. Also, like typical onsen, they're separated by gender. So the boys took off with one key and we girls set off with another. Some onsen were scalding hot, and to be honest, we cheated and only dipped our feet in. One time we managed to cool down one of the scalding pools by forming a bucket brigade with ice water from the tap. That's a lot of effort lol. The rest of the onsen were warm and relaxing, though.

After we'd visited all nine public onsen, and stopped at a liquor store for wine and sake, we headed back to Kokuya to try a couple of their non-private onsen. A huge Israeli group had just arrived with a very friendly tour guide I kept running into. Lol he kept offering to help me. We took over a gorgeous female onsen with individual wooden tubs. True to selfie form, we took a bunch more pictures. And drank wine and sake. 😊 We tried a second female onsen that was a more modern tile but not as nice. And we were soon invaded by the newly arrived guests. The night before it was just our group and another couple in the entire hotel. The privacy was fabulous.

Right before dinner, a few of us ran out to buy more wine and sake for the group, and for me to buy my crickets. The shop was run by a super cute older Japanese woman who, every time she saw us walk by her shop these two days, would run out, wave us down, pantomime questions about where we were going, try hard to help us (most of the time we didn't need it- the town is tiny, but she was so eager to help we couldn't refuse) and then invite us back into her shop lol. When I tried to buy crickets from her both times she'd throw up her hands, flail them, say "Noooooonono!" and point to a picture of a cricket. I'd just laugh, nod my head and reply, "Yes!!!" She thought that was funny. And she gave me a discount.

Dinner was another kaseki feast that I managed to survive this time. I'm really not sure where my stomach is hiding all this food trip but I've likely packed on a few pounds this trip. Oh well.

After dinner we relaxed in our rooms again before heading out to our reserved giant onsen again. Two of the girls passed out to sleep, and Billy had a rendezvous to attend to, so they didn't make it. The rest of us enjoyed our wine and sake in the onsen, laughing and telling stories.

Before leaving for second dinner, not that we were really hungry, we stopped in the room. In all my idiocy, I sat on what I thought was a stool in our room but it actually contained a Japanese tea set. I crushed a ceramic tea cup. I was horrified. Still am. This hotel has treated us like royalty and I sat on their cup. 😞 In addition, Chris broke a few glasses on accident. I feel terrible.

Second dinner ended up being a fail. Most places were closed again, and the one food place that WAS open charged us crazy prices. There was a sitting fee tacked onto our drinks, and the two potato dishes were pretty small for what we paid. I know sitting fees are common in Japan. The small food was lame, though. Tiny as it was, the potato wedges with pizza-like sauce smothered in cheese was actually really good. I really don't know that it was a Japanese dish per say but I'd totally eat it again at home.

We headed back home earlier that night since our two best karaoke singers, Billy and Michelle, weren't with us. In the morning, we'd be journeying to Kyoto after breakfast. So we packed up everything that night and headed to bed.

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