Hot Tub Monkey Business

The back story places The Professor in his previous life -- at Windham Hill Records -- where they once worked on a project ("Winter") that included beautiful video footage from Japan, synched to the label's instrumental soundtrack mix.  Apparently, he fell in love with the project's pictures of Snow Monkeys...hot tubbing primates that live in the snowy mountains above Yudanaka.  He spread his monkey love to Ginger.  Apparently she liked it and agreed that it had to be.  And so a visit to the Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park became the trip's #1 destination.  It was so much fun, we went twice.

The first day was cold and nasty, but we hiked up the trail through "Hell Valley" where volcanic smoke pours from natural geysers at the center of two steep mountains.  With only a few humans but several hundred Snow Monkeys, we hung out with the colony for hours while they soaked, preened, nursed, wrestled, and ate Fuji apples.  They were everywhere. -- between our feet and in our face.

But, the draw is their incredibly warm demeanor and sweet, playful spirit.  And the faces.  Faces that look so damn human that many of them reminded us of people we know.

People you may know.

This guy below is a dead ringer for a stoner kid in my high school who used to sell shitty weed.

It turns out that the stoner monkey has cornered the weed market in Hell's Valley.

And of course, his is really shitty too.