Hope they don’t pee in the water either

In the first draft of this post we actually had three paragraphs on the monkey but decided to delete them because, while we are experts on travel, we are not expert zoologists.

As I understand it:

There are over 230 kinds of monkeys, and they can be very different from each other. One genus of monkey is the Macaca; these are the only monkeys that can withstand freezing temperatures. The monkeys at Jigokudani are, logically enough, of the Japanese Macaca species, otherwise known as the “Snow Monkey”.

(If you follow U.S. politics you may have heard of the “Macaca Moment” that sunk George Allen’s senate campaign).

Snow Monkeys will, on occasion, bathe to get clean. But, mostly, they go into the various natural hot springs around this part of Japan to stay warm. If you go and visit Jigokudani in the winter (which I highly suggest!) you are also likely to see monkeys huddling together in larger groups for warmth and also staying warm by engaging in, um, varous X-rated monkey activities.