tokyo-yudanaka

From Tokyo it takes about two hours and a half to Nagano and then about an hour to Yudanaka

Lunch was from Lawson because there didn’t seem to be anything around the station open

From Yudanaka it’s about a 40 minute ride by bus to the Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park

Where the bus drops you off you then walk about 30 minutes to the park

At the entrance there is a sign indicating if there are monkeys out and about 

Bear bells on!

Luckily we did not see any bears even if there were signs that noted sightings of them

Once you reach the end of the trail there is a geyser, this is where we saw a monkey on the hillside

Climb up the stairs to the monkey park

Admission is 800 yen for adults

*TIP: if there aren’t any monkeys I would suggest not climbing up the stairs to the monkey park and save your money on the admission

otherwise, you will only see an empty hot spring for 800 yen....boo!

If you wondered how the monkeys learned how to use the hot spring... 

When the owner of the ryokan below, Korakukan, put out some apples for the monkeys and one of the apples rolled into the hot spring.

When the monkey went into the hot spring to get the apple, this was supposedly how they learned to use the hot spring.

Even if we didn't see any monkeys or bears, we were glad we were able to explore the area

We returned to Yudanaka and checked into our ryokan, Biyu no yado 

After setting down our things we went out to look for Yudanaka Onsen Pudding

It was an unmanned shop with an honor box, we ended up trying 3 puddings (flan) since they had a “sale” 3 for 1300, price of 1 was 500 yen

We tried the retro (firm), nameraka (smooth) & cinnamon apple

My favorite was the cinnamon apple because it was like a crustless custard apple pie  

We returned to the ryokan to bathe in their hot springs and get ready for dinner.

The fall colors that we saw on the way back to the ryokan were so vibrant!

Dinner was an assortment of ingredients especially found in Nagano prefecture.

I thought picking your own shiitake off of the cork like log then grilling them was cool!

They asked if we wanted to take the log home to grow more shiitake but I didn't want to lug it around, so we declined.

It was quite a long day but we got to see a lot and do a lot.

Biyu no Yado

2951-1 Hirao Yamanochi

Shimotakai, Nagano

I'll continue with our trip in the coming days, but if you are interested in seeing photos from our trip, please look here.