Splish! Splash!

Author: By Stan Grossfeld, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, May 25, 1997

Page: M1

Section: Travel

Consider it a sort of a vintage '70s' Club Med for Monkeys. There are plenty of water activities. Everyone gets all he can eat, and there's lots of monkeying around.

Now the trouble with travel stories is that people read them. As soon as you type in the name of a great place, it's gone. Ruined. Finis. Hasta luego. Sayonara. Sort of that ``Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot'' mentality. Right now, the clock is ticking down to the 1998 Winter Olympics to be held just a few miles from here. CBS, which paid $360 million to televise this event, is coming.

Get here before the unblinking eye arrives and this monkey paradise is choked with minicams, satellite dishes, and sports anchors with melting pancake makeup.

I urge you to go to hell, er, Hell Valley. Here amid simmering volcanoes is an onsen, or steamy hot pool, built specifically for monkeys in 1966. The goal was to keep those impish monkeys from using the outdoor hot baths for people, lower in the valley.

This area, dubbed the ``Switzerland of the East,'' is the home of nearly 200 Japanese macaques or snow monkeys. These majestic furry brown creatures, members of three ``troops,'' take turns using the steaming hot baths. Although some monkeys are posted in the trees as lookouts for rival troops, most snow monkeys can really unwind here. Some get in gingerly, others leap in. Some close their eyes and dream, others groom their mates or their children. Either way, it's a photographer's paradise, and a lot more unusual than any Olympics.

Technically, the place where you are guaranteed to see monkeys is called the Jigokudani Yaen-Koen Hell Valley Wild Monkey Park. There is a small admission charge, but there are no fences, and the monkeys have the run of the place. Although these monkeys eat insects and whittle away the bark from trees with razor teeth, they do not starve in winter.

Several times a day, motorcycles roar up and down the pine-covered hills with huge bags of barley and soy beans. Feeding time, three times a day, resembles such Olympic events as downhill skiing, gymnastics, and wrestling as each monkey tries to get his share. Monkeys leap from rock to rock to cross the river; some even dive for food in the waters. Other monkeys scream, show teeth, and fight.

A homo sapien may wonder whether these monkeys won't mistake you for a Big Mac?

In fact, the souvenir entrance tickets with the red-faced monkey photo on the front has warnings written on the back in small print. But these are written in Romanji, a combination of Japanese and Chinese characters that you could easily learn if you had 10 or 15 years to kill. Don't worry: This is the translation.

-- Keep a distance from the monkeys. If you get too close, they will get mad.

-- Don't stare in their eyes. In the monkey society. staring someone in the eyes is a sign of fighting. (Author's note: The monkeys we saw didn't care if we stared, or got within several inches. They ignored humans as if they didn't exist.)

-- Don't touch. Don't reach out even if you are smiling. They won't understand. It's another form of fighting.

-- Don't let them see if you have food and don't feed them. If they get used to being fed, they will beg. They may try to take your things.

This last warning could be said of the poor Americans. Although the dollar has rebounded more than 30 percent against the yen in the last year, Japan is still prohibitively expensive. A cup of coffee is $6, a beer $8. Americans, especially students, are the ones seen walking around the giant department store basements in Tokyo, munching on the free food samples, then leaving full-stomached and empty-handed.

We drove to the monkey paradise from Tokyo and it took more than four hours and included a $35 toll. The guys in accounting swear I added a zero to every expense receipt.

Later this year, a new Shinkansen bullet train will cut traveling time between Nagano and Tokyo to just 90 minutes.

Once you arrive in the Shiga-Kogen gateway area, there are numerous fine places to stay, most within a 1.2-mile walk from the monkey park. First you have to decide whether you want to stay at a Japanese ryokan or at a Western style hotel.

The ryokan, or Japanese style inn, includes toasty warm rooms with beautiful tatami mats. Upon entering, you take off your shoes and are given slippers and a yulata, or robe, to wear. When you go to the bathroom, you must take off your house slippers and switch to a pair of bathroom slippers, especially made for Thumbelina, which are right outside the bathroom door. Then when you forget to switch back to your house slippers you become the evening's entertainment for the locals. The Japanese have a great sense of humor.

Elaborate five-course meals -- including salmon in ginger soy sauce, steamed shrimp dumplings, broiled eel, and crab -- are served in style in private rooms. Then, after dinner, comfortable mats with quilted covers are laid on the floor. There are no beds. Some Westerners look at the experience as camping at $250 a night (meals included). Others adore the charm and comfort. All consider it a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Now the ryokan closest to the monkey park is not my favorite. The sign on the door warns that if you don't close the door, the monkeys will come inside. As a child raised watching Godzilla movies 312 times, this is not amusing. The other problem is that this close ryokan has its onsen, or hot spring pool, outside and the monkeys sometimes use the facilities in more ways than one. Although the soba, or homemade noodle soup, was delicious, the dining room was drafty and teeth-chattering cold.

We preferred the Shinshu-Kambayashi Onsen, a traditional Japanese estate. (Postal address: Jin-Pyo-Kaku; code 381-04, Kambayashi Onsen, Yamanouchi-Machi; Shimotaki-Gun, Nagano Prefecture; Japan. Phone 81-0269-33-3151; fax 81-0269-33-2638.)

Upon arrival, you are greeted with a snack and tea served in your room. The Japanese have perfected many nice touches of life, including a foot warmer built under the quilt table. This is also probably the only country in the world where the hand dryers in bathrooms actually dry your hands before you resort to wiping them on your trousers.

The Shinshu-Kambayashi Ryokan had both a segregated, immaculately clean onsen for men and women but not monkeys, and an integrated outside onsen with Jacuzzi. Clothing is optional in the onsen and you are given a small, narrow, and long towel, which almost covers private parts.

Japanese are less uptight about nudity. One evening two men, one American, one Japanese, wanted to go outside where a group of Japanese women from the local village were having a hot soak away from their husbands. The shy American was sure these woman were really Olympic body judges secretly hiding underwater cards that read 3.2 or lower. Instead, these women kept their heads up and greeted their guests with a pleasant ``Kombanwa,'' or ``Good evening.''

The next morning, fortified by several cups of green tea and miso soup, we returned to the Monkey Park. This time, another troop of monkeys was using the hot bath. This group had more babies. Monkeys outnumbered tourists 20-1.

But all that is about to change. Ten-thousand athletes are coming, CBS is coming, and this paradise is going. ``What are you going to do when the Olympics comes here with the mobs of tourists?'' the caretaker was asked.

``We're not going to do anything,'' the caretaker said matter of factly. ``People aren't going to come here. It's a 2-kilometer walk through the woods.''

He then gave my companion a special treat to offer one of the baby monkeys. This tiny snow monkey with the big eyes stood up and gently planted her soft padded fingers on the human's hand and ate the food. Then the baby just lingered there, holding hands with the human. It looked like something straight out of ``E.T.''