Blogs from Nagano, Japan, Asia - page 2

Hello my fellow travellers! Yesterday I had a wonderful and relaxed time together with Junko and Bárbara in Fujieda and Shizuoka, enjoying a tea ceremony (chanoyu) and I was able to purchase both a kimono and a pair of hakama (trousers). Today it was time to continue my journey though and so I said my goodbyes to Junko for this year as I stepped on the shinkansen (bullet train) going west. I left together with Bárbara who was heading towards Kyoto while I stepped of in Nagoya to switch for a train going to Matsumoto. On the train station in Shizuoka she said that she was going to miss me, but I told her to look at it from the positive side. Now my befuddled face wouldn't drive her mad anymore. However, she said she was ... read more

Heute die japanischen Alpen durchquert. Sie sind recht steil aber nicht übermäßig hoch. Dafür beginnen Sie aber auch bei Meeresspiegel, so dass die relative Höhe auch gleich die absolute Höhe ist. Sie sind bis zu den Gipfeln bewaldet und es fehlen die Felswände. Irgendwie wie ein wild gewordener Schwarzwald. Hier verlief auch die Straße, die früher Kyoto und Tokyo verband. Einige Dörfer sind noch im alten Stil erhalten und heute eine Touristenattraktion. Und weil heute Sonntag ist, waren wir nicht allein. Der Straßenbau in Japan verblüfft mich immer wieder. Wenn gerade kein Mensch da ist, der sich vor mir verbeugt, dann ist es ein Plakat, das einen sich tief vorbeugenden Arbeiter darstellt. Oder eine LED Anzeige, wo sich einer pausenlos verbeugt. Wieder fuhren wir teilweise auf sehr schmalen Straßen. Aber wenn dann plötzlich Platz ist, folgt ... read more

We wake up to snow. Lots of snow is on the ground. Lots of snow is falling. It is a crazy storm! The ski hills are currently closed as there is lightning and thunder with this snow storm. I've only seen a snow storm once with lightning. Brad says that it doesn't happen often here, but once in a while it does. He also said that this was supposed to be rain and the snow does turn to rain later in the day. The weather is just wild here. We get packed up and eat breakfast. We have a couple of hours before the bus comes. The old man at the hotel tells us that we can get on the bus at the station beside the hotel and that will save us from having to go ... read more

The conditions look like they may be even worse today. As much as we love snowboarding, we are a bit snobby. We decide that we haven't explored Hakuba yet, so we will do a self-guided pub crawl today. We will walk everywhere, eat things, drink things and look at things. We go to have a shower, but there is no hot water. Awesome. This place lets me down at least once a day. I guess I won't have a shower. We eat breakfast and take our time getting ready. We still make it out the door by 10am and start wandering around the town. We have grand plans for how our day will pan out, but we are okay with our plans change if we see something we like or if we get distracted. We first ... read more

Today we wake up freezing cold. The heaters stopped working last night. The walls are paper thin, and I could hear the heater beeping in the room beside us too. These heaters are powered by karosene. This town doesn't have central heating. We need to start the heater up when we enter a room and shut it off when we leave. This place, West Coast Inn, seems like a run down hostel. The people that run this place are nice, but the accommodation itself is not. It is dirty too. The same pee stains have been on the toilet seats since we got here. Darren was nice and cleaned one of the toilet seats for me. When something goes wrong here, it is tough to find someone. This place is run like a free for all. ... read more