Thursday
After all those extra hours at work, training our kids
for the Speech Contest, we got let out early so
off David, Mackie and I(Kim) trotted to the airport to
catch a
flight to Nagano. We arrived
in Nagano, Japan's
fourth largest city, early in the evening and decided to
explore a little before checking in to our ryokan.
Nagano was pretty much what you'd expect from a big
city: big, ugly, noisy! We found our self a nice little
Italian and partook in a little people spotting during
dinner, the fashions are definitely far more extreme
in the metropolis. After studying the map we set off for
our ryokan, it took rather more time than it ought and
we only managed to find it after a kindly gentleman
went out of his way to help. Proving that it is indeed
a small world the owner of the ryokan was from Saga,
only a few streets from our apartments!
Friday
When we arrived at the ryokan we could see there was a
large
temple across the road so in the morning we decided
to investigate. Although it was very large it wasn't very
interesting, the point of greatest interest were the young
kids practicing cheerleading to the tune of
'Yellow Submarine'.
Sometimes it's just safer not to ask why?!
We then made our way to the train station to find out
about hiring a car, she was very helpful and sent us a
nearby dealer, who sent us to another, who sent us to
another until we made a full circle. A little demoralized
we popped in to a travel agent to see if they could help,
after a lot of leg work she managed to come up with
something. Finally at 1:30 we were able to pick up our
Mazda Familia and get on our way.
We arrived in Matsumoto, at the foot of the Alps, just
before nightfall and decided to make our way up. Road
works and traffic made it slow going and about half way
up we gave up hope of seeing anything interesting that
evening so we opted for an onsen (hot spring) instead.
Refreshed and relaxed we headed back down to Matsumoto
for dinner, we had Indian in a bar whilst a Japanese
man sang an interesting interpretation of Copacobana!
Time to turn in, we made our way back to a Love Hotel
we had seen earlier, 'Horn'. We chose a room and the
phone rang instructing us to put our money in a
capsule, thence it was whisked away and five
minutes later up popped the change. The
room was
really big but we were all disappointed to find
there was no free porn!!
Saturday
As soon as we mentioned the Japanese Alps to anyone they
always made us promise to visit Kamikochi so off we went.
We made our way through dense traffic until there was a
split in the road about 10km from our target, here we were
approached by a rat-like man telling us that private
traffic was not permitted beyond this point and we would
have to turn around and go back to the nearest bus stop.
Mistake corrected we finally arrived at Kamikochi around
midday. Everyone was right - it was
beautiful; a river
valley at about 1500m with wonderful views of the
mountains in autumnal colors
all around. We got dropped
off at one end and walked along the river trying to
admire the nature and forget the throngs of
Japanese tourists
accompanying us along the way. The water
was clear as glass, it made you wonder what atrocities
happen down stream to turn it the muddy green color we
are more used to. About half way along we were joined
by some monkeys, at first there was
just one and
everyone was battling to get a shot then family after
family crossed the
path until we were avoiding them
rather than seeking them out! At the end of our
walk was 'Kappa Bashi' (a bridge dedicated to a
mythological Japanese creature which resembles a goblin
of sorts) this was touted in all the guide books
as 'the place' to view the Alps. Unsurprisingly it
was
no more or less beautiful
than anywhere else yet
the number of tourists quadrupled. It was another hour
before the last bus was to leave so we wandered a
little further upstream and had the nice feeling of
leaving the hoards behind. Eventually we had to turn
around and go back to the bus, stopping on the way
to take a few shots of the
moon coming up
over the mountains.
Back in Matsumoto we avoided the previous nights bar
singer and headed next door to a little Italian place.
Happily replenished we wandered around the nice little
traditional town. At 10pm we decided it was time to
start our Love Hotel hunt. It proved far more problematic
than the night before after an hour and a half with no
luck we were ready to give up hope until a policeman
stopped us! After first rolling down the wrong window
Mackie finally got the right window down, he looked
slightly bemused but managed to compose himself to ask
if we'd been drinking. With chocolate milk cartons strewn
all over the car it was pretty evident we hadn't. I
decided to ask if perchance he knew of any hotels
in the area, he directed us to a really seedy Love
Hotel, the 'Crab Park' it was full but as we arrived
(12.30am) we heard someone scuttle away then the owner
appeared and told us if we waited 10 minutes the room
would be clean!! We tried to forget about that and
instead appreciate the free porn!!
Sunday
The day before we had seen a map of the area with a
ropeway marked on it which lead up to the peaks so we
made that our destination. If anything the traffic
was even heavier than Saturday and we crawled through
the traffic this time taking the other branch of the
fork, still manned by Mr. Ratty. Soon after there was
a choice of two routes, tunnel or high road seeing as
we had got away at a reasonable hour we plumped for
the high road. Switchback after switchback took us
higher and higher until we reached some pretty
impressive scenery which
would have been helped by
thinner cloud cover. Nonetheless it was still
thoroughly amazing. The descent led us in to an
area of spa towns and a bear park! The ropeway was
in one of these spa towns at the end of a long,
long traffic jam. We'd only just arrived at our
destination and it was already 2pm. The map
depressed us even further when we realized that we
wouldn't have time to reach the summit. We ate our
sorrows away, or at least tried with a bowl of sloppy
curry and rice. At the ropeway we were torn about
whether to go up in spite of the clouds or just to
puddle around at the bottom. We decided to
go up and
although at one point we couldn't seeing anything,
scaring the middle aged Japanese half to death, we
passed through it and at the top we were greeted by
some
magnificent views.
Here we were able to truly
appreciate the
autumn colors
and David and Mackie saw
there first jay.
On the way home we stopped at a little coffee shop to
decide where we were going to stay and what we were
going to do with the little time we had the next day.
The wasabi (Japanese horseradish) farm got the majority
vote so we returned to the 'Crab Park' to see if they
had any free rooms.
Unfortunately by the time we arrived they were already
full but the owner directed us next door to the 'New
Crab Park" where we were able to get three futons,
rather than share, which was a relief but we had to do
without the porn!!
Monday
We were up bright and early in order to get a couple of
hours at the farm, it was really peaceful and relaxing
after all the traffic jams. The wasabi is actually
grown
on the river, in slightly raised
stone beds.
After watching them plant and harvest and buying a root
to take home we were on our way. Stopping by at the
Denny's in Nagoya for lunch.
I didn't really understand
but Mackie and David found this very amusing. We
dropped the car back and were at home by nightfall.
View all the photos
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