Hotel Shiga Sunvalley Yamanouchi-machi

... togeth 1000yen (7 quid) for dinner- 2 bowls of noodles, and then went to sleep broke and dreading that we would be stuck there forever. In the morning we arose early to try and get money but no-one could speak any english, nightmare! In the end there was one man from the bank who came and showed us where there was a 3rd atm, that we were unaware of, and sure enough it ejected those lovely yen notes for us :). We were very relieved, and went back to get our bags then left!

Nagano... ici Nagano. Apres la moiteur du sud, c'est un vent frais qui nous accueille dans cette ville de l'est des Alpes Japonaises. A Nagano il y a le temple Zenko-ji et les jeux olympiques d'il y a 11 ans, mais pas grand chose d'autre. Le temple renferme une icone de Bouddha vieille de plus de 1500 ans, mais personne ne l'aurait vue depuis plus de 1000 ...

... trains to deal with today. Nagano is much nicer than I thought it would be--the main street is pleasantly uphill and decorated with handing flowers and contemporary buildings. The main site is the major Zen temple Zenkoji. The walk up is pretty devoid of people, but the actual shrine grounds are totally packed, way more than I expected. Turns out that this is one of the years (every 7) that the enshrined Buddha is connected to a wooden post placed in the ...

... 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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... photo. fluckenshitnfluck*******poo. Next stop... Hiroshima. Having come all this way, I thought I'd take a few snaps of the Hiroshima dome. However, I hadn't reckoned with the 20 megatons of scaffolding it was under. AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! Why are the best bits ALWAYS under (re)construction whenever I'm in country? So I contented myself with further studies into the fattening effects of 17 servings of Japanese food per day washed down with Japanese beer ...

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.

... dark passageway feeling and groping along the walls to find the "key"! We found a kind of doorhandle object, but no key, so here's hoping it was actually the doorhandle to salvation! Karaoke Allstars!! After a fabulous dinner made by Takako and Eimear, we all headed out to a Karaoke bar where we paid 2000�� for two hours of karaoke with unlimited drinks. Such fantastic craic, I had never been to a karaoke bar before. We had our own private room ...

... en machine distributrice *On attache des genres de bavettes sur les buddha. C<est tout pour la Japon (ou presque), demain depart pour la Chine!! Campai! Cheers! Sante! **************************ENGRISH by Hamish-San Almost end of our first stop, Japan. Last Friday, we were in Kyoto for our 3rd and last night. We got a train to Nara (first capital of Japan, which passed to Kyoto and is now Tokyo). A ...

... it to your table. We had mackerel, tuna, squid, crab, and shrimp (all raw), and tempura and miso soup. It was a culinary adventure! Then, back to the hotel for the evening, which is very nice, with a great view of a bustling city square, with a river and hills beyond. Our room has a computer in it, so I was able to check my e-mail, to find out that my sister, Cris, had her baby yesterday--little Autumn Hope. And she is adorable... I can't wait to meet her!

... 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.

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.