SEPTEMBER AT JIGOKUDANI · QUIET · 8TH OF TWELVE
Food in the mountains, less reason to come down
September is the last month before the park itself starts warning you off. The troop is well fed and under no pressure to visit the pool.
21.0 °C is the 1991–2020 mean for Nagano city at 418 m. The park is at 850 m and runs two to three degrees colder, so read it as about 18.0 to 19.0 °C. No snow falls in an average September in the city.
The April–October timetable. Food still plentiful in the mountains.
The ticket, in detail湯THE GUIDED DAY, YEAR-ROUND$136 (≈¥21,200)PER PERSON · $273 (≈¥42,600) FOR ONE · ¥800 (≈$5.1) AT THE GATEOne price in all twelve months. What changes is what is at the end of it.
Live dates in SeptemberWhat the calendar does to September
QUIETEverything on this list is published by the park or by Nagaden and changes on a date. Food still plentiful in the mountains.
What the monkeys are doing in September
September is the last quiet month before the park starts warning visitors off. The mountains are still feeding the troop, so it has little reason to come down. The quiet part of the year. The air is warm enough on its own, so the pool is mostly empty — wardens sometimes throw food in to bring the troop down at all, and the ones that get in are mostly the young, playing.
In the warm months the monkeys are rarely in the pool — the air is warm enough on its own; wardens sometimes throw food into the water to encourage them in, and the ones that do get in are mostly the young, playing.
The park publishes a predicted time for the monkeys coming down from the mountain and asks visitors to check before traveling and again on the day, through its live cameras and social accounts — which is the only thing that answers «will they be there today», and it is free.
A tour cannot make the troop hungry
Read before bookingThe mountains are still feeding them. No amount of planning brings a monkey down to a pool it has no reason to visit.
THE TROOP DECIDES Park staff work to attract the monkeys during opening hours, but the monkeys may not show up at all on certain days; appearances are particularly sporadic in autumn. Seven of the 21 tours on this site include the ¥800 (≈$5.1) gate fee in the price and the rest leave it at the gate; not one of them includes a monkey.
LIVE DATES · SEPTEMBER · FROM NAGANO · ¥800 (≈$5.1) AT THE GATE
September, priced and dated
8:30–17:00 at the gate, 7 a day, reportedly on the express bus, and food still plentiful in the mountains. Everything else about the day is the same in every month, and is priced on the pages below.
OR AUGUST INSTEAD · OCTOBER INSTEAD · SUMMER AS A WHOLE · ALL TWELVE COMPARED