“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Well, if you've been following me over on twitter and facebook you will know my life sort of took a bit of a very sad pear-shaped turn and I have had to leave Japan. So for now I'm back in the countryside but will hopefully moving back to London very soon with my lovely friends Memz and Charlotte , I have lived with creative people in the past and I really miss it, it's so nice to live in a creative atmosphere, so y'know every cloud and all that. In the mean time my god do I have still have SOOOOO much of Japan still to share with you. So for this perhaps a little sad blog post I present you with monkeys. Because they're brilliant. 

So yes monkeys in Japan. It seems to be coming as a surprise to some people I'm meeting that Japan gets rather warm. And every warm place I've been so far has had monkeys and Japan is truly no exception. These amazing things are Japanese macaques otherwise known as snow monkeys.



We were greeted by this gorgeous little baby and err ..all these cameras.

I got the train into Nagano prefecture and then hitch hiked (in the ridiculous heat) to this gorgeous place known as Jigokudani Monkey Park. The word park should be used lightly, they're pretty wild and can almost definitely move on if they want, and are all around you, there are no barriers.

The place was so beautiful and I think it was actually a bath house.I desperately want to draw it so I have a few pictures of it from different angles.

So the monkeys are known as snow monkeys because during the winter this area gets a lot of snow (we actually passed some snow drifts that still hadn't melted on the way here). When there is snow on the ground they bathe in these hot springs. 

What no one told me is that they can swim..sort of..well this guy was trying very hard!

His resemblance to Thom Yorke amuses me no end.

He then proceeded to chase other bigger monkeys out of the water! These were naughty monkeys, we couldn't have any food on us or even plastic bags on display as they know they often have food in. We even saw two steal someone's walking pole! 

It really was the most gorgeous place, even with the difficult hitch hike it was so worth it. I can't wait to go back when it's snowy.