Hakuba Alpine Hotel 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!

... Cependant une copie peut etre admiree en avril-mai tous les 7 ans. Bingo pour nous, c'est en 2009 que ca se passe. Le site est bien sur tres visite, meme en dehors de cette periode. Il est possible de descendre sous l'autel et suivre un couloir dans le noir complet pour pouvoir toucher la poignee de la porte derriere laquelle est censee se trouver la ...

... 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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... out a real Japanese castle. There are not too many of these left, as they tend to burn down easily - having been made of wood and all. Not sure how they'd go in a real war. Good defensive architecture (aside from the poor bloke who has to chop the wooden bridge down over the moat - what's a drawbridge?). Enfiladed walls. False gates. Misleading paths. Kelly Ninja proof. Got a match? The castle was cool. There used to be more of it, which I'm sure would ...

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!

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 ...