Hotel Annex Nagano

... nuestro caso la soledad, que contrasta enormemente con la visión de los gigantescos edificios que lo rodean. <br><br>Podríamos destacar el estanque de "Shioiri-no-ike" cuya agua es salada y se extrae de la bahía mediante un sistema de exclusas. En el estanque y conectado con un bello puente de madera (118 metros) está la isla de "Nakajima-no-ochaya" donde el que lo desee puede acercarse a la casa ...

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

... das ganze. <br>Die Maki v**kaufen sie hi** im Sup**markt in ganzen Rollen.. .sozusagen zum selbstzuschneiden. <br><br>Heute haben wir uns** Bento gepackt und sind auf den **stbesten B**g (es ist d** Omine-yama gewesen) in Nagano gestiegen. So welchen Weg nehmen wir, als sich d** Weg teilte - die 1.3km od** die 1.8km ?? Andi entschied die 1.3 km - nicht ganz so hoch, weil mir ja sonst die puste ausgeht... jaja. D** Weg war sup**steil und eh** v ...

... the citys 1500 dollar a month is a average income by now...<br>and a lot of people do stupid jobs...in a fuelstation you have a lot of people for giving you the bills, filling your tank, wiping your windscreen...same same for building sites on the road ..always people with flags who say you what you can see yourself...even in supermarketparkingspaces you have guys stopping the pedestrians like we have it for small school children...<br>ah, and the screming guys outside the ...

... in the onsen and up the verges in their group, and there were lots of cute little babies. We stayed for a while taking photos, but soon got drenched by the rain so took shelter in an onsen lodge just across a bridge on the other side of the valley. There we had lunch- by then we hadnt eaten all day as we had the money fiasco to deal with in the morning, and had rushed to get our train and bus- so we ...

... 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 ...

... they are willing to share information, it just takes time. The ride back was filled with American and Japanese chatter, as we had all become good friends at this point. Bonding over questions and beer is never a bad thing :) We will be meeting up with a bunch of the students this thursday and most of them are coming to Boston this summer, which is really nice. We will be able to show them our home, as they have graciously shown us theirs.

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!<br><br>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 ...

... now, so I guess we`d better get moving. Don`t want to be naughty. Oh, I forgot to say that we went to Matsumoto today. Which was nice, but would have been better if it wasn`t raining. They have a nice castle that you can see the mountains from, when it`s not raining. Later: I forgot to mention some of the coolest things: we saw a BEAR and FIVE monkeys. Just chilling out. They weren`t too fussed about us being there. But the bear ran away and I didn`t get a photo. It was pretty exciting.

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