![\"This](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/002496a4-614.jpg\"\/)
\nVisitor numbers to the park have risen significantly in recent years<\/p>\n
A Japanese park famous for “snow monkeys” soaking in hot springs will cap daily numbers after a surge in visitors and cases of bad behaviour including bathing with the animals.<\/p>\n
Nestled in a valley with an altitude of 850 metres 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, “many monkeys are seen soaking in the hot spring, some for hours on end,” its website says.<\/p>\n
Touted as a “monkey paradise”, the park is the “world’s only place” to offer such a sight, its website claims.<\/p>\n
Recent years have seen the number of tourists – the vast majority of them non-Japanese – rise sharply, sometimes totalling 3,000 to 4,000 a day, a park official said.<\/p>\n
“We have been seeing incredibly long queues of visitors waiting outside the ticket booth. To ease that, we will have them buy tickets in advance” 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
\nVisitor numbers to the park have risen significantly in recent years<\/p>\n
As the number of tourists snowballed, so did instances of bad behaviour, such as trying to feed or touch the monkeys.<\/p>\n
Some have even “tried to bathe” 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 “bucket list” 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 cancelled after residents complained that their “quiet lives” 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 “snow monkeys” soaking in hot springs will cap daily numbers after a surge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-520938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}