Shibu Onsen

We arrived at Shibu Onsen in the blue hour, clattering down a lane so narrow and old that the car had to be left behind, and stepped into what felt like a film set that had somehow kept breathing. Three- and four-story wooden ryokan lean over the cobbles, steam curling out of grates in the street, and everywhere the soft slap of geta clogs on stone as guests in yukata robes shuffle between the bathhouses. Shibu’s tradition is the kuguri-yu, the pilgrimage of nine baths: staying here, you’re given a knotted cotton belt and a key that opens all nine of the public bathhouses lining the lane, each one fed by a different scalding spring, each with its own claimed cure. You go from one to the next, growing pinker and more content, and stamp a little towel at each shrine gate as you complete the circuit.

The nine baths

Our inn handed us the key on its cord almost the moment we’d taken off our shoes, and after dinner we set out into the steaming dark to do the round. The baths are small, wooden, unmarked but for a number and a curtain, and blisteringly hot — Shibu doesn’t dilute much, and we did our now-practiced ladle-and-cold routine at each one. The ninth and grandest, Oyu, is the one you finish on, and by the time we reached it we were loose-limbed and slightly drunk on heat. Between baths the lane belongs to bathrobed strangers nodding at each other in the dark, everyone on the same slow circuit, everyone smelling faintly of sulfur. Lia stamped the last mark on our little cloth and pronounced us cured of everything.

The snow monkeys up the valley

The real reason most people come is a short bus and a snowy forest walk away: Jigokudani Monkey Park, where wild Japanese macaques come down from the freezing mountains to soak in a steaming pool of their own. We went early, before the crowds, up a slippery cedar path with the river roaring below, and there they were — dozens of monkeys, red-faced and utterly unbothered by us, dozing chin-deep in the hot water while snow settled on their heads. A mother groomed her baby on a rock; a big male sank until only his nose showed, eyes closed in an expression of frank human bliss. We stayed an hour in the cold, watching, and I understood completely why they do it. We’d been doing the same thing all night in the village below.

The village that time kept

Between the monkeys and the baths, Shibu is simply a lovely place to be slow in. We walked up to the small Onsenji temple at the top of the lane, and to the Kanade-no-yu footbath, and drank canned coffee on a bench watching the valley steam. The inn we stayed in has apparently been run by the same family for generations, and the owner told us, over green tea, which of the nine baths was best for which ailment with the seriousness of a doctor. Higashiyama, the hillside district just above, is a tangle of stone steps and old shrines that we climbed for the view back down over the wooden rooftops, all of them venting steam into the cold like a village quietly breathing. It is a small place. You could “see” it in an hour. But you’d be missing the entire point, which is to stop.

Getting There

Shibu Onsen sits in the Yamanouchi hills of northern Nagano, close to Yudanaka. From Tokyo, take the Hokuriku Shinkansen to Nagano city (about 90 minutes), then transfer to the private Nagano Dentetsu line to Yudanaka Station, the end of the line, roughly 45 minutes to an hour. From Yudanaka it’s a short taxi or local bus up to Shibu — many ryokan will collect you if you ask. The nine public baths are reserved for overnight guests, who receive the key, so staying the night is really the whole experience. For the snow monkeys at Jigokudani, take the bus toward Kanbayashi Onsen and then walk the forest trail; go in the morning and dress for the cold.