The snow monkeys of Jigokudani, and their hot spring

The Japanese macaque is the most northerly living primate apart from humans. It is a stocky, thick-furred monkey with a red face, and it lives across much of Japan, from the subtropical south to the snowy mountains of northern Honshu, where winter temperatures fall well below freezing. In one valley in Nagano prefecture, a troop of these monkeys has found a way to cope with the cold that seems almost too good to be true: they sit in a hot spring.

Hell's Valley

The valley is called Jigokudani, which means "Hell's Valley", after the steam rising from its hot springs and the steep cliffs that close it in. It lies in the forested mountains of the Joshinetsu Kogen National Park, a short drive from the town of Yamanouchi and about an hour from Nagano. The monkeys had long lived in the forests around it. In the early 1960s, the story goes, a young female monkey was seen entering the hot spring bath of a local inn, others followed, and the habit spread through the troop. To keep the monkeys out of the inn's bath, a separate pool was built for them nearby. The Jigokudani Monkey Park opened in 1964, and the monkeys have been bathing in their own pool ever since.

The monkeys are wild. They come and go as they please, sleeping in the forest and coming down to the valley during the day. Park staff feed them, which keeps them close to the pool. Not all of them bathe. It is mostly females and young that sit in the water, while many of the adult males stay out, and there is a hierarchy about who gets the best spots. Research by Japanese scientists has suggested that bathing in winter lowers the monkeys' stress hormones, which will not surprise anyone who has been in a Japanese hot spring.

When to go

The monkeys can be seen at the park all year round, but the famous image, of red faces in steaming water with snow on their heads, belongs to the depths of winter. From December to March, and especially in January and February, the valley is usually deep in snow and the monkeys spend most time in the pool. In spring, summer and autumn they are still there, often with young ones in early summer, but they bathe much less, and the scene is green rather than white.

Reaching the park involves a walk of about half an hour through the forest from the nearest road, along a path that is flat but icy and snowy in winter. Good footwear with grip is essential. The rules are simple and sensible: don't touch the monkeys, don't feed them, don't stare at them closely, and keep your distance. They are used to people and generally ignore them entirely.

Nagano and Matsumoto

The monkeys are often paired with the towns of the region. Nagano, which hosted the Winter Olympics in 1998, is built around Zenkō-ji, one of the most important Buddhist temples in Japan. It has been a place of pilgrimage for well over a thousand years and is famous for the pitch-dark tunnel under its main hall, where visitors grope along the wall for a lock said to promise salvation to anyone who touches it. Matsumoto, further south, has one of the finest surviving original castles in Japan, a black-walled keep known as the Crow Castle, with the peaks of the Japanese Alps behind it.

Explore Worldwide's Simply Japan, thirteen nights, runs all year round and includes Jigokudani along with Matsumoto, Nagano, Kanazawa, Takayama, Hiroshima, Miyajima and Kyoto with Arashiyama. A departure between December and March gives the best chance of seeing the monkeys in the snow.

Explore Worldwide's Highlights of Japan, seven nights, includes Jigokudani Onsen with Tokyo, Nagano, Kanazawa, Osaka, Hiroshima, Miyajima and Kyoto. It runs from spring to autumn, so its visits see the monkeys in the green season, when they bathe less but are still very much there.

It would be easy to dismiss the snow monkeys as a curiosity. But there is something quietly touching about watching them, eyes half-closed in the steam with the snow falling around them. It is hard not to feel a certain kinship.