Blogs from Nagano , Nagano, Japan, Asia

Hello my fellow travellers! Today I was off to an early start as I left together with Trung when he went work, actually even a little bit earlier than needed because he doesn't want the others in his apartment building to know that he houses guests there because the apartment is provided by his employer. He spent the morning, before we left, cramming pretty hard because in a couple of days he will have an important exam in Tokyo and if he passes it he will get a nice salary increase! It was raining really heavily though so I knew I would find good use for the umbrella he lent me. He was kind enough to drive me the whole way to the train station in Nagano even though he was originally going to drop me ... read more

Convincing wild animals to sit in hot springs and pose for photos is not as easy as I'd hoped, despite all I'd seen on the TV. However naked men in outdoor hot springs with hand towels for hats seems to be rather common around Yamanouchi, but not as common as heated toilet seats. It's been an interesting day.... It's getting towards the end of typhoon season which means there's a lot of rain, I'm hoping it's worse here because we're in the mountains and it will get better in Kyoto. I woke a few times in the night to hear the constant downpour, wishing it would ease off but according to my weather app, there's no chance of that. This isn't the type of rain that merely trashes hair. No. It's it's the rain that has ... read more

Glyn's just asked me if I wore the toilet slippers. We're at a Ryokan (old Japanese style inn) in Yagamouchi / Yudanaka and I can't even get going to the toilet right. I saw two pairs of slipper in the toilet doorway and assumed that some lazy sod had left them lying about. Japan is the only country where I've read about the customs before arriving and when I got there, found it it was all true. Fortunately the Japanese are too polite to be angry, but we have been corrected, more than once. And we've been here about half a day. We started by flying to from Manchester to Munich to Tokyo. Towards the end of the 11 hour flight from Munich, I finally got to see Japan through the clouds: a view of dark ... read more

Nagano Japan 7 January 2016 We caught the train to Nagano which was only a 45-minute ride. We were on our way to Kyoto but we decided to stop in Nagano for a short time. This was the town where the 1998 Winter Olympics was held. We wanted to go and see the Zenkoji Temple which was written up as being pretty special. We caught the bus from the train station in Nagano up to the temple and saw the spot where the medals were presented during the Olympic Games. It was a really interesting street leading up to the temple. All the different foods, including green tea ice-cream, green tea custard cream puffs, dried fish, lots of fans, lots of small shrines, and the list goes on. Very interesting, At the Temple there were many ... read more

Let's go back, way back to the early 90s at my local video hire. Blazing out from the wall-mounted TV was footage of a guy carving up knee deep Virgin powder. Mr Video Hire's hushed tones, winking and elbow nudging hinted that he was letting me in on his closet winter Nirvana. "That's Hokkaido in Japan, the next big thing in the skiing world". That whisper soon became a rumble and quicker than beer turns to piss the cat was out of the bag. Within a few short years the trickle of Australians had swelled into mobs. Containment lines have long since been broken. Japan, particularly Niseko on Hokkaido, reaches critical mass come the northern winter. Reports have been filtering back for seasons now that Niseko has become a veritable Kuta on snow. One saying doing ... read more