Hotel Tamanoyu Matsumoto

... Jinja which was a quaint shrine with lots of pigeons. There were pigeons everywhere and they weren't afraid to get near people. Probably b/c people were feeding them bread crumbs. It was funny when all the pigeons suddenly took off at the same time and everyone ducked for cover. We also saw some little girls dressed up in traditional garb. There were some nice trees with colorful leaves too.

We finally made our way to ...

... Té. Merece la pena también la visión de los cerezos en flor, así como tomarse un momento de relax en una especie de merendero techado donde probamos una deliciosa bollería adquirida junto a la estación en la Boulangerie francesa "Donq", regada con curiosas y exquisitas bebidas (café espresso y lácteo con melocotón y mango).

El nublado día, lejos de incomodarnos, envolvía de una atm ...

Settling in in Matsumoto. Spent about 4 1/2 hours on trains today, slow one from Nikko to Utsunomiya, a shinkansen to Omiya, another shinkansen to Nagano, then another slow train to Matsumoto. Signs of civilization at the Matsumoto station - a Starbucks!

Hoping that I can find the castle tomorrow. The ryokan has bicycles to lend, so I'm going to try and ...

... attacki**t d** Japansiche Bär auch nur Japan** und keine Gaijins - was d** Bär net kennt, des frisst a a net... ne...
Sind noch etwas durch Nagano geschländ**t und dann wied** retour, zum Jusco und aufs Zimm**. Leck** onigiri und einen Tofu-klotz gekauft und geschnappofratzt und ich hab mich wied** üb**s Natto getraut. Das sind f**menti**te Sojabohnen (sup**gesund!! ab** d** g**uch...naja - Quagel is a net bess**). Hab wied** rausgefunden, das ...

... face, give face, dont loose face... says nowhere dont break promises or dont lie...
Anyway, after she repeated her invitation 3 times i said ok, they paid my beer, i paid my food.
NIce...what annoyed me was that she was inching closer and closer to me sexual harassment from a over 50 years old japanese lady?
whowww....
She then wanted to sing karaoke, so up we went, after some time i got a bill over 1700 yen, 17 dollar, went down and off she went without even saiing ...

... famished. After hot soba noodle broth we were still a bit chilled from the rain and so decided to experience the onsen for ourselves (not the same one the monkeys come in, but they sit nearby). I was a bit unsure about this as you have to go in, in the nuddy!!!! how embarrassing!!! but we whipped our towels off and went for it and thank god there was noone else there. We went in the outside onsen, as the ...

Alright, so I ended up getting roughly an hour of sleep, but I think it was less since I kept waking up. I let one of the Japanese kids sleep in my room since he was locked out and ended up on the couch and then trying to sleep in one of the classrooms. After Nanami and I stayed up talking all night, I really didn't want to sleep that much. It was a lot to digest, but it was a lot of fun. Breakfast came and went and then we had a final Q&A ...

As the title suggests, I really shouldn't have gone to Kamikochi today. It didn't bode well from the start--I forgot my maps and guides and the driver was particularly worried about me and lack of clothes, as it was SNOWING up in Kamikochi. Which I didn't really appreciate the severity of because from Matsumoto even the tallest hills didn't have any snow on the ground and though Kamikochi is a mile above sea level, it's a valley between two parallelt taller mountain ranges ...

After Spencer sleeping all day in the TV room nursing a hangover and then me booking a hotel in the completely wrong area of Japan (although very very luxourious resulted in a 7.15am wake up call to get to Nagano) we made our way to the snow monkeys!

After getting our bus to literally the middle of nowhere, we then walked for 40 minutes along a beautiful snowy trail to where the monkey sanctuary is hidden in the snow. The path is covere din ...

We took the Shinkansen to Nagano using our rail pass and after arriving found out which bus to catch out to M-Wave, the ice skating rink used in the winter Olympics. We had never been ice skating so were willing to give it a try.

Took an old wooden floored bus out to M-Wave and walked past a sign in Japanese then paid for our ticket to the ...