The “glass half full” observation of the morning we planned to hike to see the famous snow monkeys at Jigokudani Snow Money Park was that we got to see Japanese rain for the first time in our lives.  Luckily, after a couple of rounds of Phase 10 under our heated table, the rain let up enough for us to begin the walk to the monkey park.  Shortly into our 30 minute walk the rain stopped completely for what ended up being the rest of the day. The walk to the monkey park from was relatively easy and saved us about $10 USD over the bus option.

Almost as soon as we crested the hill on the first path inside the monkey park we spotted hundreds of moving brown mounds.  They were on the rocky stream bank, the grassy slopes along the paths, the paths themselves, really everywhere one looked.  There were baby monkeys playing with each other, adults grooming each other, monkeys eating, and a lot of monkeys running from a monkey who seemed to either be a really aggressive male or by far the least popular monkey.

Once inside the monkey park there was no place that was without monkeys and it was a very short walk down to the river bank or up to the hot spring pool where the monkeys would relax in the warm water much like Kelly and I had the day before.  If you want to see it for yourself, there is a live cam setup to capture pictures of the monkeys in the pool each hour here.

Walking around was a surreal experience due to the fact that there are monkeys everywhere and they seem completely unfazed by the people ogling them.  On many occasions while Kelly and I were engrossed in watching or taking pictures of monkeys (Kelly – most likely looking for a baby monkey and me – watching whatever monkey was making the most noise at the time) a monkey would walk through the 2 foot space between us.  One monkey, fresh off a dip in the pool, walked so close to Kelly as to drip on her shoe.  They are not scared of humans at all!

I imagine that we could have stayed all day watching the monkeys if hunger did not call us back to civilization.  After a quick walk back into town we enjoyed some soba noodles for lunch and decided we had had enough nature for the day add would attempt to find the Sake Museum we had been hearing about.  It took a couple of trips down the same 1000 ft stretch of road before we found the “museum”.  I put museum in quotes because while while it is called a museum every museum that I have been to before has had exhibits or some collection of things to look at often accompanied by a small sign that tells the viewer what is being displayed.  In the sake “museum” there is a bar with 17 bottles of  sake and a basket of small glasses.

Upon entering we hesitated because there was no one in the room and since we could not read the Japanese on the door we were not really sure it was the right place.  There was definitely sake but it didn’t look like a museum.  A man ran over from the adjoining police post and said “Here is sake, serve yourselves”, and promptly returned to work, shutting the door behind him.  Still confused about what was happening we decided to dive in and pour ourselves a shot from the first bottle of “Snow Monkey” sake.  We made it to about bottle 7 or 8 before a woman entered the room from the opposite side of the police post.  Startled, Kelly and I instantly froze since it felt like we were doing something wrong or stealing from a unattended bar or something like that.  As she crosses the room the woman smiled and we said hello in Japanese with certainly terrible pronunciation.  The woman replied with something else in Japanese which I took to be a some sort of greeting but was not “hello,” “thank you,” or “dumpling” so I can’t be certain.  After grabbing some from the desk behind us she exited and we kept moving down the line of bottles.  The woman appeared again around bottle 13 and exchanged smiles with us and exited even more quickly than before.

Having finished a taste from each of the 17 bottles, in about 15 minutes, we did a quick lap around the small room, confirmed that there was nothing we could understand and left. While this may not have been the typical museum experience, I do think that other museums should take note because it was an excellent museum experience.

Next stop: the Shiga Kogen brewery next door to the sake museum. We stopped for some Japanese IPAs and did our best to chat with the bartender before walking back toward our hostel to find some dinner. We ended what was one of, if not the, best days of the trip so far with one more beer from the liquor store and another round of Phase 10 in our traditional Japanese inn.