Kamikochi Hotel Matsumoto

... shop in town and we stopped in to have a look around. All of their furniture was made by hand of beautiful wood. Some very ornate and traditional looking but much of it was what I can only describe as Japan meets Frank Lloyd Wright. Absolutely beautiful – and WOW! The prices were out of this world!

After leaving the city we drove to a sky resort area there was some snow on the ground but the ski season hasn't started yet. We turned to a hot springs spa (called an ...

... Jinja which was a quaint shrine with lots of pigeons. There were pigeons everywhere and they weren't afraid to get near people. Probably b/c people were feeding them bread crumbs. It was funny when all the pigeons suddenly took off at the same time and everyone ducked for cover. We also saw some little girls dressed up in traditional garb. There were some nice trees with colorful leaves too.

We finally made our way to ...

... allí durante la posguerra. La lluvia no impide que la actividad comercial continúe y puedes encontrar puestos de comida, ropa, zapaterías, electrodomésticos, cosmética, etc.

Cogemos el metro hasta la estación de "Shimbashi" en la zona de "SHIODOME" para comenzar visitando el "Jardín de hama-rikyu" (300 yen). Se trata de 250 hectáreas de terrenos ganados al mar donde impera la sencillez y ...

... tub in an enclosed space outside and proceeded to soak in that on my own for a good 20 mins (i believe the term i would use to describe my complexion after that was beetroot!).

Post soak and it was time for dinner at a local eatery which was kind enough to introduce us to a local delicacy of the region- Hida beef. While quite fatty, this beef is quite lean on the outside with most of the fat content coming from the multiple, fine marbled lines that run through it ...

... 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.

Sind seit gest**n in Sakudaira (ist in Nagano Nähe und scheinbar so unbedeutend, das ichs nur auf Japanisch gefunden hab... ), ab** die leute hi** haben einen riesige Einkaufsmall - JUSCO Hurra...
Gest**n haben wir uns wied** mit Futt** aufs Zimm** v**zogen, vorh** eben in Einkaufsmall Leck**eien eingekauft. Da gabs viel Zeugs zum Probi**en unt** and**em Maguro Sashimi... jaaa eigentlich will ich ja meinen Thunfisch v**brauch einschränken (vor allem d ...

... en anglais. Donc, j'ai fait un peu de repassage, refait mes valises et lu un peu.

Takayama est dans les montagnes. C'est un petit village ou il y a beaucoup d'agriculture et ou les gens travaillent le bois. Ils sont memes reputes pour leur travail. Il y a de tres beaux bols en bois lacques qui coutent, vous vous en doutez, une fortune. C'est une petite ville et tout ferme a 4h30-5h. Et quand je dis tout, j ...

... at the architecture and subtle differences between houses of different functions. There were also a few buildings with people doing (or teaching) traditional arts, like wood-carving or ceramic painting, for the tourists’ enjoyment.

Back on the bus at 4.15. Guess we did have enough time. At the train station, we got our tickets back to Tokyo. Since we’d left Tokyo 1 day too early, we had to buy ...

... 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 ...

... I pointed at the bus. "Is this the right bus for the snow monkeys?" "hai, hai, hai" (yes), and with that and a concoction of Japanese sentences that I couldn`t understand at all, the driver directed me onto the bus. Apparently the bag success had left me overconfident. I started to get concerned just after we had set off. The reason being, the bus was full of foreign tourists, all talking about fancy ski lodges. This is something I had not encountered before. Everywhere else I'd been ...