Hotel Stelle Belle Hakuba-mura

... togeth 1000yen (7 quid) for dinner- 2 bowls of noodles, and then went to sleep broke and dreading that we would be stuck there forever. In the morning we arose early to try and get money but no-one could speak any english, nightmare! In the end there was one man from the bank who came and showed us where there was a 3rd atm, that we were unaware of, and sure enough it ejected those lovely yen notes for us :). We were very relieved, and went back to get our bags then left!

Nagano... ici Nagano. Apres la moiteur du sud, c'est un vent frais qui nous accueille dans cette ville de l'est des Alpes Japonaises. A Nagano il y a le temple Zenko-ji et les jeux olympiques d'il y a 11 ans, mais pas grand chose d'autre. Le temple renferme une icone de Bouddha vieille de plus de 1500 ans, mais personne ne l'aurait vue depuis plus de 1000 ...

... trains to deal with today. Nagano is much nicer than I thought it would be--the main street is pleasantly uphill and decorated with handing flowers and contemporary buildings. The main site is the major Zen temple Zenkoji. The walk up is pretty devoid of people, but the actual shrine grounds are totally packed, way more than I expected. Turns out that this is one of the years (every 7) that the enshrined Buddha is connected to a wooden post placed in the ...

... from 9-5pm and we naturally got there too late.

I love bullet trains in Japan. We got from Nagano back to Tokyo in the space of an hour and a half and summing up enough energy we found our ludicrously small hostel with a kitchen meant for 40 guests consisting of two hobs and a hot plate and crawled into bed exhausted!


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Aside from the dire need to increase the minimum height of their ceilings by at least 6", Japan is grouse. Grouse food, grouse people, reasonably grouse ski slopes (OK, so I was spoilt by the French alps) and grouse food. The 10 days we spent there were just enough to get to know the people, culture and a wee bit of the language, but not too so long so as to get homesick and go running for Mc Donalds. However, it wasn't shprt enough to stop me from stacking ...

I am going to keep the chat to a minimum here and let the (many) photos do the talking. I went to Nagano to see the "Snow Monkeys". They were awesome. After a short 2km hike through snowy forested mountains, suddenly there were monkeys running across the path - and they literally came within an inch of my feet! Well worth the visit.

Parie en randonnee tres top ce matin car il n'y a qu'un seul train qui vas vers la station ou la randonnee commence. une fois arriver a la montagne, on doit prendre un gondole et 2 chair lift pour se rendre au point de depart du sentier. De la je me suis rendu au sommet a 2700m en 2 heures puis je suis revenue en 1heure et demi. Le temps de revenir a la gare et faire un peu d'epicerie, il est deja 17h00.

Aujoud'hui, il fait tres beau, pas trop chaud,18 celcius. Je suis partie en randonnee au mont Goryu, la base de la montagne est a 5 min a pied de l'auberge. C'est 6.2 km pour se rendre au sommet de 2007m d'altitude. Apres avoir marcher mes 12.4 km, je suis arriver en bas, ou il y a une piscine pour l'entrainement de saut en ski.

Enfin rendu a destination apres une heures et demi de plus. J'ai donc fait plus de 7 heures de train dans ma journee, pour me rendre ici, a hakuba, pres de nagano, ou les olympiques d'hiver de 1998 ont eu lieux. La temprature est beaucoup plus clemente, environ 18 le jours et 10 la nuits, ca va faire chagement des 25 et plus depuis mon arriver. Il fait noir, alors on ne voir pas grand chose mais les autres residents de l'auberge m'ont dis que le paysage est pas mal beau. On vera ca demain!

... to come by to take us back into town. Eventually one arrived and we walked up to the Zenkoji Temple past a street full of temple residences.

We wandered around the temple complex and gardens and even saw someone ringling the large bell using a wooden log before walking back down to the train station and catching the train back to Tokyo.