Glacier Hotel Hakuba-mura

... If you dont already know, Hokosai painted the many scenes of mount fuji including the famous Wave picture you will all have seen. So it was quite a busy little place, with quite a few tour buses around. After checking in to the hostel we walked down the road to the museum and were inundated with free samples of various japanese foods, some nice some so very not. The exhibition was great, we were both very impressed by his work which included beautiful landscapes, scenes on ...

... 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 !

... the comfort of this gesture...which kinda depresses me. Anyway, other than the racoon, a really pleasant afternoon at Zenkoji. Lots of multi-coloured streamers in wind, incense burning everything and tones of cosmic connections being made. I actually ended up on a line for blessings by a monk--he covered my head with some fabric, did some incantations and 5 seconds later, I'd been blessed...or baptised or whatever. I can't say anything really came to me ...

... you can get really close to the monkeys and watching the mums with the baby monkeys is lovely. Unfortunately the monkeys only come down when they are fed so luckily we timed it perfectly and managed to get some brilliant shots. But wait around if there aren't any there once you get there they will soon turn up when the keeps start throwing the pellets on the ground.

We also met an Australian family with a 8 month old baby on a similar trip ...

... Kel calls it a Jurassic joint or tyrannosaurus joint or something), it was time to go sightseeing through south west Japan, which was also grouse. We went to Kyoto (more temples, shrines, castles and palaces then you can poke a seated Japanese snowboarder at), Hiroshima (Thankfully levelled by the Americans in '45 so that they could start again without those troublesome aforementioned temples, palaces, historical sites, small laneways, buildings or people ...

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.