Hotel Jikyokan Nagano

... We strolled around the grounds and then entered the castle. We had to take off our shoes to enter. The castle had seven floors including a secret floor which would be filled with samurais, unbeknownst to enemies. Most of the floors were dark except for the top most floors. There were many small windows for shooting enemies with rifles or pouring rocks or boiling water of those who might try to scale the castle walls. There were many ...

... la compacta puerta del Mausoleo de la familia "Tokugawa".

Continuamos la ruta pasando junto a la "Tokyo Tower" finalizada en 1958, siendo la torre de acero autosoportada más alta del mundo con 333 metros, 13 más que la Torre Eiffel de Paris aunque con un 40 % menos de peso. Siguen sorprendiéndonos las gasolineras con sus surtidores colgando del techo, lo que deja mucho más espacio para ...

... some money on cab fare. Hopefully I can remember to ride on the left side of the street and the other vehicles remember to do the same. I'm also hoping that the rumors of English-speaking guides are true.

Adjusting my expectations... I had thought I'd zip through the castle and get to Kyoto early. Probably not. Everything takes longer than you think.

... ja einmal war uns so als ob uns etwas größ**es weit** oben eine zeitlang begleitet hätte ... bin schon etwas schnell** gegangen sich** ist sich**... Als Andi es auch bem**kte, hat ** noch sch**zhaft gemeint "Vielleicht gibts hi** ja Bären...haha" - jaja
ob uns d** H**r nur einen Bären, mit den Bären aufbinden wollte - haben wir jetzt im int**net nachgelesen... siehe auch hi**: http://japaninfo.at/news/japan-aktuell_ 18-barenattacken
Hui...na ...

... the citys 1500 dollar a month is a average income by now...
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...
ah, and the screming guys outside the ...

... famished. After hot soba noodle broth we were still a bit chilled from the rain and so decided to experience the onsen for ourselves (not the same one the monkeys come in, but they sit nearby). I was a bit unsure about this as you have to go in, in the nuddy!!!! how embarrassing!!! but we whipped our towels off and went for it and thank god there was noone else there. We went in the outside onsen, as the ...

For our third day of the rail pass, we zoomed off to Obuse, near the Japanese alps, north west of Tokyo. This involved first getting the bullet train to Nagano, then getting a local train to Obuse, the smallest town in that area. It was a very attractive little place, with pretty houses and well kept flowerbeds. So, you might be wondering why we came here, well, this is where the artist Hokosai painted in his final years, and there is a museum here showcasing some of his work ...

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!

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 ...

... Aimee and Charlotte after an hour of following Aimee rubbish directions to the hostel, missing out the valuable point of taking a left rather than right of the first line of directions. I did get revenge though on insisting we visiting the cinema to watch spiderman 3 that night.....the film was shocking especially after the first two are so good....and bored them to death for 2 hours!!!!

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 ...