Readers may remember that thanks to a Christmas present from Ewan I have been for two years an adopter of the Japanese macaques at the Highland Wildlife Park.  Clearly I had to visit the originals in Japan.  These are the animals that bathe in a hot pool just like their human counterparts.  Originally it was the same pool apparently but as I overheard one visitor say "I don't want monkey shit in my bath water", so they built a separate pool for the monkeys.  It's really only in cold weather that they bathe and even though there was some sleet while I was there only one animal ventured into the water.

To visit the park I went to Nagano for the weekend.  It was pouring rain and getting dark when I arrived.  I'd booked a hotel that was cheap and near the station but was damned if I could find it.  I staggered about the streets for a while wiping the rain from my eyes and my phone screen and eventually stuck my head into a restaurant and asked a waitress where the hotel was.  She pulled a phone out of her pocket, looked it up and asked me to wait.  She ran to the back of the restaurant, came back with an umbrella and proceeded to lead me through the streets.  Now it wasn't terribly far but it was across a couple of roads and round a corner or two so I class that as ginormous kindness to a stranger.  Not just from her but from the boss who let her leave her job to do it.

On the Saturday morning I joined a small group for a day tour that included visiting the monkeys.  First we went to the amazing Zenkoji Temple.  The place was packed with tourists and I guess there were a few worshippers thrown in.  It's very beautiful and colourful.

Approaching the main temple, hat concealing guide

Monks arriving for some ceremony or other

Don't know who these chaps are but must be important

After the temple visit we went off to lunch and here's my meal.

Beautifully presented as seems always to be the case.  The thing that looks suspiciously like a toffee apple is a small ladle used to take liquid from the white paper bowl in which meat and vegetables are cooking.  All very tasty.

Lunch over we travelled for about an hour to get to our take off point.  From there we walked through a forest for half an hour or so till we came to the park.  The monkeys, of which there were zillions, completely ignored the visitors, even brushing against us as they went about their business.  That consisted 99.9% of the time in scrabbling about for food.  Just like Scotland's troop they had a penchant for keeping their heads down and their backs to those of us trying to take pictures but I got quite a few.

The following day I headed out of town.  Nagano is surrounded by mountains, the highest of which is about 2,300 metres.  It hosted the winter olympics in 1998 and as will undoubtedly be the case in 2026 at Milan/Cortina (which I hope to attend) events like ice hockey were held in town and the skiing in the mountains.

I saw a party of skiers arrive in Nagano when I did and subsequently saw the odd person carrying a snowboard so the season was not quite over but these people must have gone pretty high up given what I saw or didn't see.   The Hakuba express bus lists Iwatake Mountain Resort amongst its stops.  That sounded just the place where I could potter about, have lunch and then catch the bus back to town.

The best laid plans and all that.  The journey there was lovely; pretty countryside, Japan's longest river, glimpses of snow-covered peaks.  But the resort!  Deserted.  Not a soul in sight.

No snow, not open for business

So I set off downhill and had a splendid walk for about an hour to Hakuba station.  I could have done it in much less time but I was in no hurry and took quite a few pictures.  It's not that easy to get good landscape pictures because the place is festooned with electricity cables, distribution being all above ground.  But here's a couple of shots.

From Hakuba station there are trains to various places but not to Nagano so I had to wait for a bus.  I used  the wait to have something to eat in a tiny restaurant.  It was a sort of vegetable fritter cake with noodles in a broth.  Totally delicious.  I've forgotten what it was called but my Japanese teacher decried that as incorrect.  I've now also forgotten what he declared it should have been called.

A last word about Nagano.  I was struck by the legend on the side of the buses and even more so by

the tune that is played when the zebra crossing lights turn to green.