Monkey Business

Just before the holidays I got my contract for next year.  It included a significant pay raise and inclusion of airfare, but I realized that just wasn't enough.  Officially, I'm paying for my master's out of pocket, and here I just can't do that AND afford my rock and roll lifestyle.  Unofficially, I'm just not happy at my school.  Teaching anklebiters is tough enough; teaching ones that backtalk and take FOREVER to instruct because they. Will.  Not.  Be quiet! is - turns out - impossible.  And that's just the tip of the iceberg, but that's a discussion for a more appropriate forum.

This got me thinking about what I want to do before I leave Japan.  Hopefully I'll be back, but who knows what the future holds, so I decided to carpe the fuck out of of the diems I have left, which is how I ended up deciding to go to Jigokudani this weekend.  We had a three-day weekend (an actual one, as opposed to one where the school makes us work on the Saturday), so I booked a room at a ryokan and off I went.

One thing I'm really going to miss when I leave Japan is my pocket wifi.  Most of the fact-finding I did about getting to the monkey park I did on the Shinkansen Saturday morning.  When I got off the train I went straight down to the Nagaden train station to get the Monkey Pass, a 3-day pass that gets you into the park free and allows you to ride any of the trains and buses as much as you want.  At the bottom of the stairs I was met by a signboard that said they were being sold at the bus stop.  On the other side of the station.  I fought my way through crowds of gaijin with skis and snowboards (whom I prayed weren't going my way...some were, but I didn't end up throwing any of them off the mountain) and eventually paid my 3,500 yen and went to get snacks before getting on the 1:15 express bus, which takes you nearly all the way to the park. 

It's fortunate that I've been missing Mongolia lately.  If not, I might have been a little resentful of all the snow.  I saw snow for the first time in Tokyo that morning, and it lasted all of 10 minutes.  In the mountains the trees were weighed down with the stuff.  Blondie had warned me to wear good hiking boots, and between my Skechers and my penguin walk, I didn't fall down off of the mountain.  I probably should have rented the crampons - my legs and hips were aching from my unaccustomed gait.  The signage as you go through the onsen town says the park is 1.6 kilometers away...but that really means once you hit the trail. 

Finally I got to the entrance to the monkey park, the end of the 1.6k...which was followed by a steep climb up stairs and along a little more trail.  Before long I hit the cabin - a kind of museum/gift shop/toilet/lockers facility where they stamp your monkey pass, since it's only good for one visit.  This is also the only place you can eat snacks in the park - if the monkeys see or hear plastic, apparently they mob you.  I left my backpack in a locker and went down toward the stream and bathing pools, where the monkeys were doing monkey things.

And luckily, one of them wasn't shy about getting in the water.  It's hard to predict animal behavior, and I probably would have felt a little cheated if none of the monkeys were actually IN the water.  Maybe I should have gotten there earlier, but I got the shots I came for, so I left happy.

And I am happy to report that none of them jumped on my head.  Monkeys always make me a little nervous, and you'd be justified in asking why I keep going to see them.  In this case, I have to say it was the draw of that - as Blondie put it - perfect NatGeo photo.  For an hour or so, I got to pretend I was out on assignment, taking shots of these majestic wild beasts.  All of which is, of course, a fiction - they're not that wild and I'm definitely not a pro-photographer.  However, this term's course for my master's is in photography, so hopefully by summer I'll be a little bit more of one.