Jal City Nagano

... que contrasta enormemente con la visión de los gigantescos edificios que lo rodean.

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 del Té. Merece la pena ...

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 ...

... 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 ...

... ones were burning hot. It was very relaxing and you could see a nice view of the valley and the monkeys hopping about around you. As we were right at the bottom of the valley we could see people really high above us but they couldnt see us very well, which was only a good thing. We then went back to the park and stayed for a while longer before getting the bus and train to Nagano, the main city of that ...

... 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

... che sgattaiolavano alle 6 del mattino per la cerimonia. La oste, una pseudo suora che snocciolava qualche parola di inglese, dopo qualche giorno penso si sia affezionata a noi perche' ci faceva sempre trovare al nostro ritorno delle mele sbucciate e mezzo litro di sake.... che credetemi aiuta a dormire per terra....!!! Spostandoci in paesini piu' piccoli in montagna abbiamo avuto l'occasione di alloggiare nelle tipiche locande tradizionali (Ryokan), convivendo con ...