Hakuba Mominoki Hotel Nagano

... 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 !

Busy day today because all my sightseeing has been put off by the weather. But today is sunny, sunny and sunny. Started way early, and was actually the 2nd tourist inside Matsumoto castle today. The castle is very different than Himeji (which looks more majestic but it's apples v. oranges here); not only in color but it's set up as a completely wartime castle. While Himeji is peacefully situated on park land and had living quarters and extra room to give away ...

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

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.

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

... guy staring at you becomes quite something... We went off to a village where the Ninja trained, but we did not see any (of course not, they're ninjas....) and their museum was closed because it was all snowed in. We had a great time with a sleigh we rented and 3 meter (!) of the white stuff! We warmed up in the local 'onsen' great hot water springs where you get in with a whole bunch of naked locals. Those are great, we are getting quite into them ...