Japan Winter Wildlife

Japan Winter Wildlife - In 2006 Nina and I joined a trip with Zegrahm Expeditions (no longer in business) during February just after moving to our new home in Great Barrington, MA to visit the Japanese Macaques (more commonly known as Snow Monkeys) which live in a geothermically active area of Nagano Prefecture in Western Honshu IslandJapan, some three hours by train from Tokyo. This is a resort area full of hot springs and, as the story apparently goes, sometime in the Nineteen Fifties an adolescent macaque ventured into one of the hot springs (monkeys generally stay away from pools as their bones are much denser than ours and they may drown). This one supposedly taught others and soon they were joining resort guests in their ryokan (country inn) hot springs. Eventually the people built Jigokudani Yaen-koen (Hell’s Valley), a small pool for the monkeys only and opened a monkey park, which today in winter attracts about 260 monkeys in several troops on a rotating basis which are managed and fed grains by the park staff. It’s small size attracts photographers and others and offers truly intimate experiences with the monkeys.