Goodbye City, Hello Country!

Yesterday we wrapped up our short visit to Matsumoto, which is the largest city in the Alps region and is considered the "gateway" to the Japan Alps. The morning was somewhat rushed as we wanted to make a 1pm train, so we had to zoom through downtown to see the Castle. By the time we got there, having missed the shuttle bus and then gotten distracted by "nature day" activities, a little street market, and a wedding at a shrine we had about 20 minutes to tour the amazing castle. For twenty bucks this didn't seem like a good investment, but Benna insisted, so to be practical she and I did the mini-tour while Jana and Aleeza rested in the shade, as it was already about 95 degrees and bright sunny weather.

The Castle has six floors, and you can walk through them all. There are displays with artifacts of all kinds. in twenty minutes, we made it through the first and second levels. Oh well. It was really cool. This picture shows the "moon viewing" room. Scott and David would have enjoyed the large collection of weapons and armor, including lots of muskets and old pistols in very good restored condition. They showed a bunch of parts, too, with diagrams showing how they were manufactured and assembled.



After this short adventure, we hopped the shuttle bus and returned to the station and found our platform. By now we are quite good at this, we know how to read the signs and we know that there is always an escalator or elevator nearby. We also are making good use of the coin lockers to store our many bags!



Despite being an outpost, a number of different machines pass through Matsumoto station. In these pictures we see the Super Azusa that runs to Tokyo, the Shinano that runs to Nagoya, and the local train that cruises the single-track into the hills and out to the west coast.

We rode another train not shown. A cool thing about Matsumoto station, as we sat on the platform eating snacks, as each train arrived a female voice announced "Matsumotoooooooo!" in a singing voice. It was cool, the girls sang along after a while.

Speaking of snacks, here is a picture of a kiosk at the station. There are tons of these in every station, in addition to many other stores that sell low to high end food and gifts. The kiosk food is not too expensive and it is always fresh and delicious. They restock them constantly. You can see chips, sandwiches, rice-balls with all kinds of stuffing, soft drinks and cold beer. No danger of starving or remaining sober!



So we hopped our train and rode into the hills. The scenery transformed from beautiful to breathtaking. It was very hazy, but we could see the snow on the mountain tops within ten minutes. Soon there were no buildings other than small houses at the bases of the mountains. Along the track we could see retaining walls, avalanche barriers, and tall pine trees. As we approached our destination, the train passed the bases of chairlifts.

Hakuba itself reminded me of a swiss village with all the signs in Japanese. The station was swarming with backpackers waiting for the train back down to the cities. (Of course that is the train we just rode up on, the crew was immediately and furiously cleaning it and spinning the seats around for the return trip.) A phone call later, we were on our way to the Powder Lodge.

These pictures show the view from our window. We can see snow in the hills, despite the fact that we are in a heat wave here. These are big mountains! The town itself is at 1,800 meters. To the left, we can see the ski jumps from when the Olympics were here in 1998. Many of the big mountain sides we can see have ski trails. This is bigtime powder country!



The lodge is nice, and the kids are in heaven. There is a gameroom with foosball and Wii. There is a bigscreen TV room with a huge selection of movies, including many kids titles. There is a yard with a kiddie pool and some toys, and in the picture you can see the garden. There is a communal kitchen, lots of couches and tables for playing cards or socializing. It did not take long for us to fall into conversation with the other folks, who consist of the owners and their three kids (4yrs and twins 2yrs), an American couple who teach at an international school in Tokyo and their two boys (5yrs and 7yrs) and a Greek couple who are friends of the owners. We watched a movie together and shared food and beer and conversation until bedtime. It is especially nice for the kids to be free without getting "Shusshed." Our kids are actually the least noisy so far - the owners kids are screeching and crying all over the place. The wife apologized this morning and I explained that it is actually a relief to feel free to let our own kids be kids!



Not sure what we will do today. We all need some down-time. Perhaps a simple agenda of going to the river to splash around! In the coming days I hope to ride one of the many summer gondolas to the top, where we are told there are a number of activities for kids and adults, including hikes and mountain bike rentals. The town is very cute, and we would like to shop a bit. We already spent an hour at the supermarket yesterday while the kids "relaxed" (watched a video!)

Having fun - wish you were here!