Hotel Nagano Avenue

... destacamos: la grandiosa puerta de acceso "Sangedatsumon" construida en 1605; las imágenes que se encuentran en su austero interior; las interminables filas de figurillas infantiles con gesto de oración y llamativos ropajes que se hallan en una especie de cementerio de niños, acompañadas por veletas que imprimen movimiento y colorido a sus ya desaparecidas vidas; y la serie de estatuas que ...

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 ...

... Natto ohne Reis nur pur mit etwas Senf und Sojasauce nicht schmeckt. Wenig Natto mit viel Reis - okay. Viel Natto ohne Reis - no go. das wusst ich eigentlich schon seit dem letzten besuch in Japan...ab** man kanns ja nochmal v**suchen, weils doch so gesund ist. <br>Jetzt haben wir nochmal eine Nacht dazugebucht und wollen morgen etwas ins gebirgig**e Landesinn**e mit den Zug, mal sehen ob wir den Bären doch noch zu gesicht bekommen... (hoffenlich nicht) <br>

... br>lol...but i have also a lot of experiences in the other way...here examples...<br><br>hitchhiking...quite easy, even as japanese never do it...funny thing is they invite you to food or give you money...almost always... i refuse always three times, and then i take what they want to get rid of...funny behavior, theoretically it schould be possible to earn money that way.<br><br>Otherwise japan is nice, very clean, not as ultramodern as you might think, also it seems that ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... Autumn colours, apparently it is much more spectacular than we see at home due to Japans climate. The combination of rain and soil here fully exploits the spectrum of colours. Its hard to describe how beautiful it is and I felt my camera just couldnt capture it properly. We also visited a volcanic caldera, which smelt exactly like Rotarua! Because Japan is situated on the Ring of Fire, it has alot of volcanic activity and often experiences ...

... to come by to take us back into town. Eventually one arrived and we walked up to the Zenkoji Temple past a street full of temple residences.<br><br>We wandered around the temple complex and gardens and even saw someone ringling the large bell using a wooden log before walking back down to the train station and catching the train back to Tokyo.<br>