Good morning!

I get to write about a lot of fun things that we did today, but first I want to make sure I don’t forget to mention a weird quirk: if you’re ever in the mountains around Nagano, bring your own soap. I have no idea why, but many public bathrooms don’t have hand soap here. And also the bathroom at our ryokan didn’t have soap. Word to the wise.

Now that I’ve said that, another adventure today!

This is the trip of adventures. This is the most we have moved around on any trip Jimmy and I have ever done, and I am starting to feel it.

We got up this morning (last time waking up on the floor with an achey back, woohoo!), and had another great breakfast.

And then says goodbye to beautiful Nozawaonsen.

The owner of our hotel was able to help us get scheduled with Yamato transport, a company in Japan that will transport your ski stuff for you. They’ll pick the guys’ snowboarding bags up from the hotel and transport them to the airport where they will be stored until we show up at the end of our trip.

It’s a really cool service, but they require 48hrs for transport which meant we couldn’t use them at the beginning of the trip. This whole time those guys gave lugging around normal suitcases, but also giant bags containing their snowboard gear on trains, buses, metros, and extra large taxis. So glad to say goodbye to those bags.

The goal for today was to visit the snow monkey (called Jigokudani monkey park) in another area of the Nagano mountains. This area is home to A TON of snow monkeys, and the park houses a natural hot springs that the monkeys like to take a dig in.

Jimmy and I went to the park on our last trip, but it was too hot for the monkeys to get in the hot springs. This time the weather was perfect for them.

We knew we would be bringing our stuff with us as we were doing it as a stop between Nozawa and Nagano, and the internet had assured me there would be luggage lockers at the park.

Technically that was true, however the people ahead of us in line took the last two lockers at the base, meaning that we had to drag our bags uphill through ice and sludge and beg a hotel to store them. The hotel seemed a bit disgruntled about it, but charged us a ton of money to take them. The walk up that slippery hill with my bags was definitely a low moment.

Just passed the hotel was a very cute cafe and restaurant who were making an absolute killing of selling shoe spikes to visitors. The walk from the cafe to the entrance of the monkey park is about a 30min walk, and this time of year it was very slippery. I had warned the guys about this and packed my own shoe spikes, but they had poo-pooed me. Which meant they bought spikes there.

Even before you get to the entrance you start to see the monkeys.

This guy was wandering by down at the bottom, and we saw a couple of them outside the cafe as well.

When Jimmy and I had been before, there were only a few visitors there, but today it was pretty packed with people.

Luckily the area is big enough and people are moving around enough that it was possible to find little spots of your own. The monkeys were completely unbothered

Ok, I’m just gunna dump a bunch of monkey pics on you all

You can see some of the hoards of people over Jimmy’s shoulder.

After watching the monkeys play around (they really are seriously cute; this is an attraction that was not ruined by too many people), we dropped into the cafe for some lunch.

It’s hard to see in this pic, but they had monkey marshmallows that made it look like the monkey was taking on Onsen moment in your latte.

I also had a decent flat bread pizza, and a delightful apple tart with soft serve.

And Jimmy had his favorite: Ramen

Newly fortified with food, we grabbed our luggage from the hotel we stored it at and hopped on a bus to Nagano, where we’ll be staying tonight.

Nagano is a much bigger town than Hakuba or Nozawa, but it’s still in the mountains and still beautiful.

It’s also the first time Jimmy and I get a room to ourselves on the trip. Jordan has been such a good sport staying with us, but it’s nice to get some privacy too.

Jimmy was craving soba noodles for dinner, so we hit the streets in search of a place that Google told us had good reviews.

Later on the trip Jimmy and I will be going on a ramen tour, so I’m sure I’ll write more about ramen then, but soba noodles are different because they are made from buckwheat. You can get them as a soup, but I love the dipping you often get to do with soba.

We show up to the address that Google gave us, and found the entrance to the restaurant was down some stairs in the basement.

When we went down the stairs, we opened a door onto a kitchen area with a couple of tables. This place was tiny. A woman working in the kitchen came up to us with a piece of paper that explained they do a set multi course testing menu made of soba dishes. They couldn’t do substitutions. If that seemed fine, we were welcome.

The reviews for the place on Google were really good, so we just decided to go with it and see what happened.

We were placed in a corner booth, and we were the only people in the restaurant that evening.

What we learned later is that once they start cooking, they close to any other guests for the night. As we left we saw they had out a sign saying they were full. And they kind of were, with our party occupying one of only two tables.

The waitress didn’t speak English, but she was equipped with Google Translate, a menu with English descriptions, and a lot of patience.

Our English menu listed our 5 dishes, each course with an element made from buckwheat.

There was some confusion about ordering drinks (we tried really hard to order sake, and she kept pointing to the menu which didn’t have sake options on it. Later we learned sake in Japanese just means alcohol. No wonder she was confused).

When all was said and done we had a glorious 9 course meal which did include multiple types of soba with dip. It took 2 1/2 hours, and was time well spent. Every course was delicious.

The chef and server were the only people working (no idea if they are a couple or just run the restaurant together), but the food was delicious, and the experience was really one of a kind. When all was said and done, we ended up paying about $30 per person for an exclusive tasting meal including our drinks.

If you’re ever in Nagano, head away from the train station, into a little alley, and down stairs lined with wine bottles to find SobaYa. You won’t regret it.

But make sure you bring cash. Jordan and I had to stay behind as hostages will Jimmy ran to closest ATM. They were really cool about it though.

Goodnight.