Monkey Onsen...

So the morning after that terrible aforementioned night at the bar. We all headed out to Yamanouchi, an hour outside Nagano. We arrive in this town made popular for it's abundance of onsen or hot springs. While spending a leisurely day soaking in a boiling natural spring sounded great after a long night leaning over the toilet. I found myself soon hiking up a muddy snowy mountain path, fully loaded with all my camera gear. Awesome...

As we come around a bend in the path, a small river side village, cut straight from the side of the mountain becomes visible, with steam rising from countless vents and cracks in the all wooden buildings. Rope bridges criss crossing the raging river below. This place looked like something out of fantasy film. I started internally humming the theme to Willow in my head, but I'm a huge nerd like that. Anyways...

Soon, we spot something moving amongst the the fantasy village. Small, fury... not human. Sweet jebus we found a village inhabited my Japanese snow monkeys! As I wiped the tears of joy away from my eyes, which still smelled of gin btw, and was about to throw my passport into the river, renounce my nationality and join this advanced snow monkey utopia forever I see something else. It's a human, and hes fat, and hes naked...

Bah, other humans have found this place before. Becoming leader of the snow monkey village may be tougher than I originally planned. It turns out this place was made by humans, and that other humans come here to get naked and soak in the steaming natural hot springs. However, monkeys also like to be naked, they also enjoy a nice warm bath during the cold mountain winter. So they wander in from the forest, and set up shop. Whether chilling in the onsen, wrastling, or just trying to steal your keys those monkeys were pretty cool to hang with. I recommend it to anyone visiting Japan.



This is Moogie aka Moogenstein aka MR. Moojangles. He's a snow monkey.



Don't do it Moogie...



He's also a thief.