SIX TOURS · AND THE ONE SECOND STOP YOU CAN ADD WITHOUT A TOUR
Obuse is twenty minutes up the line you would take to the monkeys anyway
Obuse sits on the Nagano Dentetsu line between Nagano and Yudanaka, which is the railway to the monkeys. That makes it the one pairing on this site you can bolt on to a self-made day for the price of a ticket, and the one where a tour has the least work to do.
6 of the 21 tours in this catalogue stop at both. They run from $64 (≈¥10,000) a person to $526 for the vehicle, and the one with the most reviews behind it — Snow Monkey Park and Zenkoji Temple Private Day Tour — has 138.
SOURCE MARKS IN THE MARGIN官official — the park or the operator publishes this二confirmed by two independent sources計counted here, on this page, from the figures above？a single source, so it is stated softly
What Obuse costs and opens to without a tour
Published pricesEvery figure here is the operator’s or the site’s own, and none of it is what a tour charges. It is the number a tour has to beat, or not beat, for a reason.
¥2,930 (≈$19) — Obuse inserted into a day you were making anyway.
¥870 + ¥1,200 + ¥760 + ¥100 = ¥2,930PUBLISHED PRICES ONLY
The JR Pass does not cover the Nagano Dentetsu line, so the fares above are paid whatever pass you are carrying — and that is as true of the leg to the monkeys as of the leg to Obuse.
The 6 tours that stop at both
6 of 21 tours3 priced per person and 3 for the whole vehicle, dearest reviews first. Each name opens the full review of that product — its price, its published day and who its operator says it is not for — and every one of them can be booked from the strip below.
ADD THIS ONE YOURSELF Break the journey at Obuse and the whole detour is ¥2,930 (≈$19) including the museum — because it is on the way, not off it. A tour is worth it here for the car and the guide, or for reaching Ganshō-in, which the railway does not; it is not worth it for the arithmetic.
What nobody selling this pairing tells you
Read before bookingThe chestnut harvest is mid-September to mid-October, which is the emptiest part of the monkey year: the macaques barely use the pool while the air is warm. Obuse at its best and the monkeys at their best are different months, and no tour can make them the same one.
THE OPERATOR’S PAGE WILL NOT SAY THIS
- HOKUSAI KAN
- The Hokusai museum holds the two festival-float ceilings he painted here in his eighties; ¥1,200 (≈$7.7) standard and more during a special exhibition, 9:00–17:00, closed only on 31 December, twelve minutes on foot from Obuse station.
- NAGADEN OBUSE
- Nagano to Obuse is 17.5 km, ¥870 (≈$5.6), about 20 minutes on the limited express with a flat ¥100 (≈$0.6) surcharge or 30 on a local; Yudanaka to Obuse is ¥760 (≈$4.9) and Obuse is a limited-express stop. The JR Pass does not cover the Nagano Dentetsu line.
- CHESTNUTS
- Chestnuts were grown here by the Muromachi period and protected as tribute to the shogunate in the Edo period; the harvest is mid-September to mid-October, and the town frames the claim as soil and climate rather than volume.
- MUSEUM TICKET
- A three-museum ticket covers the Hokusai-kan, the Obuse Museum · Nakajima Chinami-kan and the Takai Kōzan Memorial Hall; ¥1,700–2,300 (≈$11–15) for an adult depending on the exhibition running, and there is no child version of it.
- GANSHOIN
- Hokusai painted the phoenix ceiling here in 1848 at 88, the year before he died: 6.3 m by 5.5 m, twenty-one tatami mats, never restored. ¥500 (≈$3.2) adult, ¥200 (≈$1.3) child; 9:00–16:30 Apr–Oct, 9:00–16:00 Nov, 9:30–15:30 Dec–Mar — it does not close for winter.
LIVE DATES · $447 (≈¥69,700) · 4.7 FROM 138 REVIEWS · 6 TOURS DO BOTH
The monkeys are the half that needs solving
Obuse you could reach on your own. Two hours of road each way, a ¥800 (≈$5.1) ticket and a 25–40-minute walk are what a tour is actually for — and 6 of them put both halves in one booking.
OR AND ZENKŌ-JI · AND TOGAKUSHI · AND A SAKE TASTING · EVERY TOUR, COMPARED