Monkeytown

After Tokyo it's on to Nagano, about two hours north-west by Bullet Train and home to my next Workaway.

I've actually been just outside Nagano, in a sleepy little mountain town called Yudanaka. You hop on a pootling little local railway from the city the end of the line, the town following the river valley up into the hills. It's quiet, quaint and traditional, at 6pm every day the train station speakers play a tune that sounds straight out of the 1920s, and the streets are lined with little family-owned, one-bath onsen that I keep mistaking for public toilets. And although I managed to leapfrog the entire sakura (cherry blossom) season the area's coming alive with poppies, tulips and daffodils. So... it's nice. Chilled beyond belief.

There's almost zero chance you'll have heard of Yudanaka by name but you've definitely seen the town's one claim to fame in a magazine or a BBC doc - it's the place where snow monkeys come down and sit in outdoor hot springs in the winter. Which means this peaceful little area is actually a bit of a bottle neck, with a massive daily turnover of western tourists and Japanese daytrippers coming by train and busload. People come up from Tokyo, sleep for one night, go see the monkeys the next day and then head back. It's an interesting vibe, it was definitely the most foreigners I've seen on a daily basis outside of the cities and the local people here still have a very rural outlook so they sort of accept the flow of out of towners with their weird city ways and shiny clothes. But the industry means there's plenty of good restaurants, and further up the valley the town morphs into cute little streets that look straight out of Ghibli.

I have to say the monkey park itself is a bit meh. It's 800 yen (about £6) to get in and at this time of year the snow monkeys aren't in the hot springs. It's summer so they're just... monkeys (the 'snow' is silent). But the hike up the valley's scenic, if very sweaty, and you see a fair few monkeys roaming the hills outside the pay-to-enter area. Plus if you find the right path on the way back you can drop by a sake distillery with free tastings.

For my money the other Must See sight nearby is Togakushi, a series of three shrines up in the mountains (reachable via the number 70 bus that stops directly outside Nagano station, fact fans). It's a good two hour hike from the lower shrine up to the top, medium-challenging paths taking you through the forests, past lakes and little mini shrines. The upper shrine has an amazing cedar-lined pathway before the inevitable quad-burning stairway to the final waterfall. Those Shinto builders did love a metaphorical ascent to heaven.

The region's also the birthplace of soba noodles and I never need an excuse to eat. The boss lady at a little family-run place introduced me to the intricacies of soba dining - try the noodles with a salt sprinkle first, then try with no salt dipped in soup, then go freestyle with whatever mix of salt and soup floats your boat. It's a more complex flavour than it sounds, and the mountain vegetable tempura was incredible.

My Workaway's at a little guesthouse called Zen, which does exactly what it says over the door. I've mostly tried to avoid the guesthouse Workaways, the setups just don't appeal or they look truly like shit conditions for unpaid work. But at Zen it's just a nice place to recharge, fair chores for meals and a place to sleep. The hardest work day was when a monkey got into one of the guest rooms and threw mud everywhere, little bastard. Golden Week was also a bit of a slog - it's a week long holiday so the guesthouse was rammed, and I was the only Workawayer at the time changing twenty-something beds a day.

Three weeks is maybe a bit long to stay in Yudanaka, after the monkeys there isn't really a long to-do list of essential sights, but I've been in no rush to move on and there are ways to fill the days. If you investigate little towns like these there's always loads of tucked-away mountain paths with hidden temples and statues. Other than that I'm trying to use the free time to get into good habits. There's a mini gym in the guesthouse to try and fight the inevitable onset of ramen-chub (with the worst bench press setup I've ever seen). I'm keeping up with my daily Japanese lessons, doing some pencil sketches for the first time since I was about fourteen years old (varying degrees of success), and I started doing yoga again. It sounds like I've gone full gap-year-wanker but I get super tense calves and if I can remember to do it daily it really helps.

Plus Nagano's a nice city and only about forty minutes by train. Although I'll hold my hand up - my day trip to see the main temple complex was really just a thinly veiled cover for going to see Infinity War (soooo good, and thank the lord that Japanese cinemas play most films with subtitles instead of dubbing).

One little thing I've been spotting recently is Japanese locals' bad habits. Two examples - you aren't supposed to stick chopsticks directly into food in a stabby way, and I've seen that broken in a fair few homes. Maybe it's a 'one rule out, my rules at home' situation. And recently at an onsen I saw a guy fully dipping his little dick-towel into the water. To put it into perspective this is probably the cultural equivalent of dropping a deuce in a public swimming pool. They're little things, but when it's such a strict, restrained culture overall it's interesting to see how people's commitment drops when they think no one's watching.

And yes it's fine to call it a dick-towel, it doesn't really cover anything successfully so 'modesty-towel' is an overstatement.

#travel #japan #Workaway #japanese