Hotel Koyanagi Matsumoto

... Before we exited the grounds, we visited a gift shop. I was going to save my souvenir money for Hiemji Castle which I was really looking forward to. My brother started his souvenir key chain collection. To our delight, we discovered Japanese Kit-Kats! They came in different flavors - apple, blueberry cheesecake, and hot pepper. That's right, hot pepper! We didn't try hot pepper but we got blueberry which was pretty delicious. Why ...

... por algo...No sé como será el nivel 6 a 10, pero te puedo decir que el 1 me generó una serie de sensaciones gustativas ligeramente cercanas al límite de la pérdida total y definitiva del sentido del gusto!!!! Creo que estaba rico pero no lo recuerdo bien porque se me encharcó el cerebro al beber tanto líquido intentando paliar los efectos currynales en mi boca...

Del Templo de ...

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!

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

... und dann noch in die Einkaufstüte, od** das Toilettenpapi** ist einzeln in Plastik od** Papi** v**packt... And****seits sind jetzt sogenannte Eco - Bags d**zeit hi** d** totale Renn** - wobei das wohl eh** so ne Mode**scheinung zu sein scheint.
Dann hab ich noch Sake Dosen mit unt**schiedlichen Geschmacksrichtungen gefunden (Japanische Alkopops sozusagen ^_^). Gest**n hatte ich Pfirsich Geschmack heute Ume - also Pflaumengeschmack.Seeeeehr ...

... reminds me, last night i spend in a former ninja training vilage high in the mountains...
when i went to the next city, 3 kms sout, i met a nice family, wich sat down with me and eventually the maybe 50 year old woman invited me to stay in her house...and this more than once...after my experiences in china i said nothing binding, because they dont give a **** there about promises, concept of hounour unknown...they have the face-concept, something slightly different.
dont ...

... walked the rest of the way to the park, through a forest. En route we took the wrong turning and ended up walking up a path marked with a sign warning us of poisonous snakes, whoopsy! When we finally got there it was wonderful. The monkeys are wild but you could get up really close to take pictures. Mark went so close I thought they were going to attack him! They were great to watch, as they frolicked ...

... The Japanese students asked us questions, and we asked the Japanese students questions. They were all anonymous, which was nice. The questions ranged from what is your favorite foods to do you think we speak english well, to "would you ever date a Japanese person?" It was great to see how curious our new friends had become and it was amazing to realize how much we don't really know about each others cultures. Although the Japanese are ...

... about each others culture. There were so many questions, confusion, and I think in the end, a bit of enlightenment. I still don't understand the culture completely and feel as if I never will. I don't think an outsider is privileged to such information. Regardless, I think our talk formed a strong bond and I hope we have more like it in the future.

... 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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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 ...