Nagano

Nagano was by far my favorite weekend trip from Tokyo. It has a little bit of everything: temples, onsen, and nature. Our first stop was the Zenkoji youth hostel. We were greeted by an old lady who was perhaps the kindest hostel owner in all of Japan. She proceeded to lead us on the tour of the city on the way to the onsen. We stopped at a sake brewery where she got the owners to give us free tastes of sake (japanese rice wine), and umeshu (japanese plum liquor). Next she got us into the onsen (Japanese spa) for free. 

The main temple, Zenkoji, was also impressive. The main attraction was a 10 minute walk in complete darkness under the temple, where you touch the "key to paradise". 

Temple Guard

"Rotating the stone wheel may save one from pain and suffering"

It is no wonder Mario was invented in Japan. Religion sometimes seems set up like a video game. Rotating this stone wheel saves you from pain and suffering, visiting a temple on a certain day counts as 30,000 normal visits, dipping money in a specific shrines gives greater returns when it is spent. I'm continually fascinated by the many temples and shrines implanted all over Japan, and the general non-religiousness of most of the population.

After visiting the shrine we headed to the monkey onsen. I had been wanting to see the Japanese snow-monkeys since watching Baraka and seeing the saddest monkey in the world. Well, we found them, all of them. The Nagano monkey park housed more monkeys than we could imagine. Babies, adults, fighting for food, with plenty of japanese and a sprinkle of foreign tourists to entertain themselves.

Photo shoot

kawaii

We obviously had not choice but to get ice cream here