Oharuka-no Yu Hakuba-mura

... and pictures of japanese ladies. We spent the afternoon exploring the town and Mark had a chestnut icecream- the place is also reknowned for its chestnut confectionary. By this point we had spent all of the cash we had on us and were directed to 2 atms nearby, however neither would accept our cards (all visa) even though they had the visa logo on them. These were the only places to get money out in the whole town and we had no other way of getting any, arggh! So we ...

... icone (symbolisant la mort et la renaissance tout en s'etant connecte avec Bouddha...). Bref, tres interessant ! On a aussi assiste a la priere de fermeture du temple pour la nuit : chants, percussions et cymbales creant une atmosphere spirituelle tres particuliere. Mais voila, ca sera tout pour Nagano, il n'existe meme pas de cartes postables de la ville !

... which lies about 30 minutes train ride west of central, Imperial palace Tokyo, thigns got really, really stressful. Tons of people, which was fine except I had my massive suitcase and for whatever reason, there's a lack of elevators. And escalators sometimes only reach half way up a floor so you have to drag your bag up the remaining flights of stairs. All this because I needed to buy a Keio bus ticket to get to Fuji later. But Shinjuku station has 2 ...

... 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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... minus the wench, and in a fancy ass kimono and wooden jandals, bro. Was caught a little un prepared. Haven't obviously stared with the jaw dropped at a chick since last time I saw a couple of hot lesbians making out. Felt a little embarrassed afterwards. Sorry Ms Geisha. Was OK tho - Kel was as stunned as I was and stared as much as I did. I even had the camera in hand, turned on, on the right settings, facing the right direction, and managed not to take ...

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!

... and ice-skating rink. We went through the rather disappointing museum and through to the ice skating rink to find the lights off and half the ice melted. It was then that we realised that the sign out the front in Japanese probably said the rink was closed due to maintenance.

We left M-Wave, had lunch and then had to wait ages for another ...