When we were on our way home on the last train after our Kamakura day, we decided to get out of Tokyo during our last couple days of vacation. My friend really wanted to see snow, so we decided to meet up in, like, eight hours and hop on a shinkansen to Nagano.The shinkansen goes through a lot of tunnels, and one of them was a magic tunnel. On one side of it was sun, and when we got to the other side, it was super snowy. It was snowing when we got to Nagano City and much colder than Tokyo. Nagano City has a big temple, Zenko-ji, that we wanted to visit; we ended up walking there (a long walk, but it was interesting to see a new city and we built a tiny snowman on the way). The temple was really beautiful in the snow! I really enjoyed it. We also got amazake there - second time in two days!
Our plan after the temple was to go to the Yamanouchi area of Nagano to see monkeys who hang out in hot springs. We took a 40 minute train ride (a comfortable limited express train) to Yudanaka and asked about where to go for the monkeys, but we were told that it was too late and the monkeys would be sleeping. So we hung around there and explored and took a lot of pictures (there was a lot more snow there than in Nagano City) and threw snow at each other and got really cold.
There wasn't a limited express when we wanted to go back to Nagano City, so we had to take a local. It was horrible. It was freezing and the train was old and loud and it took forever. When we got back, our plan was to get the shinkansen back home; we had only intended to stay for the day. But we were disappointed not to have seen the monkeys, so we decided to stay the night. However, we had nowhere to stay. So we decided to do what we would do at home if we got caught out by missing the last train: stay a long time at a restaurant, go to karaoke, and then go to McDonald's and fall asleep. This plan went great until the McDonald's part; there was a 24-hour McDonald's at the station, but when we went in (at a bit after 4 am) they said we could only get take out and weren't allowed to stay there. So we walked around a lot to try to stay warm until a waiting room at the station opened and then hung out there for a little while.
Enjoy our shinkansen, our snowman, a reminder of the Olympics, three pics from Zenko-ji and three from around Yudanaka.
Loved your description of the magic tunnel - that must have been something to come out in a completely different looking place!! And, too bad about the 24-hour McDonald's having limitations - but you are resourceful it seems!! My favorite pictures were the tiny snowman - love him; the dragon; and the pic above that one with the very artistic trees, snow, etc. Lovely!!
ReplyDeleteAh, I experienced a magic tunnel in the Rockies in October - one side was gloriously sunny, and the other side was gloriously snowy! It truly is magical. The monkeys in the hot springs were a good reason to wait BUT if I'd been there, the all-night experience would have been somewhat frustrating. Sounds like you kept your optimistic outlook though, despite being turned out on the street by McDonald's! :)
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