Nagano Central Hotel

... castle. I've seen pictures of it but seeing it in person was truly awesome. One of the reasons why I came to Japan was to see the castles. I really felt like it was samurai times. The exterior was dark (hence the nickname "the Black Crow"). It was surrounded by a moat filled with giant carp. As we approached the entrance, we spotted two guys who were dressed up like samurais. But they took off before I could get my camera out. Darnit ...

... Roku" con la celebre escultura de la araña "Maman" de Louis Bourgeois.

En metro hasta "AKIHABARA"... pero aquí me gustaría hacer un inciso sobre el "Metro" de Tokyo. No voy a extenderme con su fecha de construcción ni datos numéricos... sino con la experiencia de entrar en uno de los medios de trasporte que raya casi la perfección... por detalles como estos:

• La limpieza y el ...
  Japan, Japan sultanaviajes

... 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.

... Thunfisch wird ja dank d** Fischmethoden imm** we***** - auch ist fraglich ob das ganze Delfinfreundlich abgeht... jaja die Japan** und die Delfine ist ja ein eigenes Thema) ab** es ist einfach zu leck**. Wenn dir d** Fisch direkt auf d** Zunge z**rinnt... Umweltfreundlichkeit ist eh ein zweischneidiges Schw**t, da wird ein**seits alles mögliche eingepackt (wrapping culture Japan!!) selbst wenn man v**packtes eis kauft, wirds nochmal in ein Tütel extra ...

... 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 ...

From Obuse, we travelled further along the train line, into the mountains and to a place called Yudanaka. In the winter you can go skiing around here but obviously there was no snow whilst we were here, just a bit of rain. The reason we came here was to visit the snow monkeys. These monkeys are macaques which come down the valley and are partial to bathing in the natural onsen (hot springs). We got a bus ...

... 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 ...

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 ...

... It was awesome, and on our 3rd day of skiing, I went down one of the Olympic courses (the others were too difficult), and I didn't even fall a single time. Although, the last part of the course was a straight down drop, and I couldn't control myself and was going super fast. But the good thing is that there was a very long, wide, flat, and straight course after it, so I was able to slow down gradually. It was so fun to go down the Olympic course!!!

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 ...