a hike up the snow mountain to visit our snow monkey friends

Before leaving Nagano, we decided to join a local day tour to better know this beautiful place outside of the ski mountains. The tour includes visiting Jigokudani Wild Monkey Hotsprings, Masuichi-Ichimura Sake Brewery and Zenkoji Temple. Highlight of this tour is definitely the snow monkeys. We had to hike up the snow mountain to search for our dear little friends, who keep themselves warm in the winters by dipping in the onsen. Really cute fur balls and they are nonchalent towards us.

Next, we went to this little town called Obuse for lunch at this traditional sake brewery. The town is really nice but has been tourisified. Souvenier shops along the streets, sake tasting, fruit stores etc.

Sake tasting at the brewery. My boy enjoying it to the max. Surprisingly even though sake has relatively high alcohol level, I don't turn red from it.

One of their local delicacy, fried locust. Really tasty =)

Our final stop was Zenkoji Temple. It's one of Japan's national treasure and has over 1400 years of history. It's like the mecca of the Japanese as most try to visit this temple at least once a lifetime. Really can't bear to leave the beautiful snow city but Tokyo awaits =) I'll surely come back to Nagano for more snow action.

Authentic char grilled unagi. Taste totally different from those back at home. Love love love unagi, not a state of total awareness =)