A Japanese park famous for \u201csnow monkeys\u201d soaking in hot springs will cap daily numbers after a surge in visitors and cases of bad behavior including bathing with the animals, an official has said.<\/p>\n
Nestled in a valley with an altitude of 850 meters (nearly 2,800 feet) in the central Nagano region, Jigokudani Yaen-Koen is inhabited by wild Japanese macaques that regularly bathe in its hot volcanic spring waters.<\/p>\n
On frigid, snowy winter days, \u201cmany monkeys are seen soaking in the hot spring, some for hours on end,\u201d its website says.<\/p>\n
Touted as a \u201cmonkey paradise,\u201d the park is the \u201cworld\u2019s only place\u201d to offer such a sight, its website claims.<\/p>\n
Recent years have seen the number of tourists \u2014 the vast majority of them non-Japanese \u2014 rise sharply, sometimes totaling 3,000 to 4,000 a day, a park official said Friday, declining to be named.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been seeing incredibly long queues of visitors waiting outside the ticket booth. To ease that, we will have them buy tickets in advance\u201d online, the official said.<\/p>\n
The shift toward an online booking system will start in August, with a possible cap of 2,000 people a day.<\/p>\n
As the number of tourists snowballed, so did instances of bad behavior, such as trying to feed or touch the monkeys.<\/p>\n
Some have even \u201ctried to bathe\u201d together with the animals, the official said.<\/p>\n
About 42.7 million tourists flocked to Japan in 2025, an all-time high, as the weak yen boosted the appeal of the \u201cbucket list\u201d destination.<\/p>\n
Complaints of overcrowding have grown in hotspots like Kyoto, with some disrespectful tourists accused of harassing kimono-clad geisha performers in their frenzy for photos.<\/p>\n
In February, a cherry blossom festival in Fujiyoshida, boasting a highly Instagrammable view of Mount Fuji, was canceled after residents complained that their \u201cquiet lives\u201d were under threat.<\/p>\n
The city in central Japan complained of chronic traffic jams, cigarette butts tossed, trespassing and even people defecating in private gardens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Japanese park famous for \u201csnow monkeys\u201d soaking in hot springs will cap daily numbers after a surge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[2837,49,48,272636,98573,213029,272637,66,1674,323],"class_list":["post-766633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animals","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-manners","tag-monkeys","tag-nagano","tag-overtourism","tag-science","tag-tourism","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}