Ichiro-san from Shimaya Ryokan has told us beforehand that we could walk from Jigokudani Monkey Park to Shibu Onsen and then back to Shimaya Ryokan. However he also told us that if we need a lift, we could give him a call. It was very cold especially when we were outdoor for so long. So we decided to call Ichiro-san if he could give us a lift to Shibu Onsen and we would walk back to ryokan from there. We met another 2 sisters who stayed in Shimaya Ryokan and they were also thinking about asking for a lift. They arrived later than us and it was already snowing then.

And so... we were to walk down and Ichiro-san would wait for us at the entrance to the monkey park. Oh.. another important thing to note, there is a vending machine near Korakukan. This vending machine was the most expensive one I bought from - at 150 yen but the hot drinks was hot (暑い) instead of warm (暖かい). Think the most expensive one was in Disney...

Shibu Onsen was famous for 9 public hot spring bath houses. There is a hot spring tour where you can get a stamp from each hot spring bath houses.

Ichiro-san dropped us off at a sake gallery... so, that was our first stop in this quaint little town.

The interior of the sake gallery - free beer and sake to taste. Moo Moo Gal and Ms Mo each bought a beer from here back home. I didn't get any as I have already cart one all the way from Takayama.




... however I had a little, and I think it helps with the cold winter :)

We then continued our walk... along the way, there were little signs leading to Yudanaka train station.


Beautiful scenaries along the way... I know I'll miss all these winter scenaries. Actually the puffy jacket that make me appeared clumsy kept me rather warm... despite making me appeared clumsy.




Signboard showing the location of the hot spring bath houses.


For female... for male...


Onsen eggs on sale...


Another of those cute man-hole :p I bet if these are in Malaysia, it would've been gone long ago.


At this point of time, we started to look for food, as well as toilet. As we were walking down the street, a lady manning those food-souvenir shop beckoned us to go into her shop to warm ourselves up. LOL.. and we obliged. Not only we warmed ourselves, we contributed to her sales that day, and piled more weight to our luggages. I added some exotic flavour Kit Kat to the already stuffed backpack. I actually spent more than 1,000 yen buying Kit Kat.

We picked another eatery from the pamplet, from memory it was called Tanuki.


It was another of those cosy-homely udon/soba place run by family or a couple. It was decorated with disney characters. The shop looked like connected to their home because we asked if we could use the toilet and it looked like part of their home.

I had oden, finally. Have been waiting to try it for ages. Cost 500 yen at this place. There was 2 eggs in there... let's not go into how much calories it comes up to. There was also a few pieces of jelly-looking food, called konnyaku.


Clockwise from top left: some vege as starter, my lunch - oden, Ms Mo's tsukimi soba, and Moo Moo Gal's tanuki soba (I think so)

I like Yudanaka... the small, quaint town. To me, the hike to Jigokudani Yaenkoen and shooting the snow monkeys in the cold is well worth it.


We then returned to Shimaya Ryokan and fluffed a little, had some snacks and Ichiro-san sent us to the train station. Before that, they even tied a 5 yen coin to our bags. :)




Side note: What to munch, what to munch, what to munch...