Winter Photo Tour of Japan | Snow Monkeys!

May 12 | Evan | No Comments |

Located in Nagano Prefecture, the Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park in Yamanouchi has become a very popular place for tourists visiting Japan to include on their Japan tour itinerary.  If you google snow monkey Japan, you will find all sorts of articles and a few videos and then if you go to the images section of google, your heart will possibly melt from all the cute photos of these monkeys trying to stay warm during Winter in Japan!

While the snow monkey park is manmade, the surrounding mountains are the monkeys natural habitat and you can usually position yourself to so it’s not obvious you are in a park.  The crowds of people have been increasing though, so sometimes it’s harder to avoid other humans in the photos with monkeys!  Although, the other humans sometimes provide some interesting photo opportunities as well, like this guy who thought it was a good idea to get close to the monkey here:

It’s almost a perfect comic strip as the monkey’s reaction went from “What are you looking at?” to “Go away” to laughing to himself over how scared the human was!  Besides taking photos here I really enjoyed just observing the monkeys in the Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park…

I saw many characteristics displayed by the monkeys that appeared to be similar to humans, for example, love (grooming, taking care of, hugging and a little more… intimate), curiosity (one baby monkey untied a person’s shoes for example), bullying (one monkey launched a surprise attack on another) and of course, the natural desire we have to get warm when it’s cold.   The peak season to visit the monkey park in Jigokudani is February as that’s when Yamanouchi tends to be the coldest and gets the most snow.  I went just at the beginning of March and the path still had quite a bit of snow/ice and the snow monkey park had some snow but you can see that it wasn’t covered in snow.  The snow monkey park may not be great for everyone visiting Japan, but as it can be done as a day trip from Tokyo, it certainly makes for a nice an unique opportunity to take photos in Japan!  Below are a few more photos of the snow monkeys in Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park.

Interested in visiting Japan and the snow monkey park with me?  Go ahead and contact me to get your escorted trip to Japan or photography tour of Japan started!  Also, Japan Photo Guide is partnering with Magic Is Photo Tours for a 2017 Winter Photography Tour of Japan.  At the time of this post, there are only 4 spots left for that trip!