Hotel Wadano-no Mori in Hakuba Hakuba-mura

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 ...

... 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 !

... by a rope of multicolored strings. This creates a 'direct' connection between the Buddha and pilgrims who touch the wooden pillar. Of course this means that there's a ton of people waiting for the chance to create this cosmic connection, which apparently is supposed to help you get a peaceful death. How...comforting? I don't know why, but I'm always a little saddened by Buddhist related stories and events. One of the side attractions was a lantern ...

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 ...

... have been cool, but it got, um, burnt down by some poor sod in the 40's. Lucky for him, he didn't have to have a go at seppuku with the sharp end of a sword cos the emperor didn't really like the buildings he burnt down anyway... Speaking of American, the young Japanese in Osaka seem to have embraced American culture - there are streets full of shops selling American clothes, music and accessories, and then there's those that wear all that, er, stuff. Go ...

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.

Enfin rendu a destination apres une heures et demi de plus. J'ai donc fait plus de 7 heures de train dans ma journee, pour me rendre ici, a hakuba, pres de nagano, ou les olympiques d'hiver de 1998 ont eu lieux. La temprature est beaucoup plus clemente, environ 18 le jours et 10 la nuits, ca va faire chagement des 25 et plus depuis mon arriver. Il fait noir, alors on ne voir pas grand chose mais les autres residents de l'auberge m'ont dis que le paysage est pas mal beau. On vera ca demain!

... 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.

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