We spent a few days in Nagano and very pleasant it was, but really cold. The people were very friendly – I don’t want to offend but compared to Tokyo (and I know it’s because it’s a capital city, they are the same everywhere), extremely friendly.

We took the Azusa train from Tachikawa at 8:24 and arrived in Matsumoto at 10:37. It was full, so I’m glad we booked and didn’t just roll up on the day like we had planned.

We stayed at Hotel 168 aka Iroha (if you know Japanese, you’ll get it). I didn’t, my husband had to explain it, I had assumed it was some Hawaiian word, kind of like ‘aloha’, but not. I think I’ve mentioned this story before, but I’m the sort of person who saw a number 20 bus at my bus stop and assumed it was the 24, but the driver had forgotten to put the 4, so just jumped on it. Luckily, it was going where I needed it to.

Anyway! The hotel was nice (and cheap) and included a decent breakfast with lots of veggie options. Also, they did free ramen or ice cream at night. It was rammed so we didn’t go, but it was popular and the noodles looked big enough to consider them a meal.

We dropped our stuff at the hotel and walked to Matsumoto City Museum of Art to see the Yayoi Kusama exhibition which was only ¥410 and was pretty much empty. It had elements of Teamlab, but better (in my opinion). It was really good and you should definitely go.

We wanted to get dango, so we trotted to the shop – it is a very walkable city. It was at this point that I realised I was wearing odd socks but it was that cold, that I just thought, ‘who cares?’.

I’ve shoved all the food together. We did it in this order – dango, soba, ice cream, coffee. We were having one of our, ‘can only eat food of a certain colour days’ and that day was beige/brown. It went really well as you can see although the green on my negi soba sort of ruined it.

We didn’t eat back to back, we went to Matsumoto Castle before the coffee (I think). We paid to go in and it was ¥700 each. I think you should contribute to places but I don’t think I’d rush to go back in the castle. Seeing it from outside was good enough for me. In the castle, it was steep ladder-ish stairs, no photos allowed and you had to take your shoes off and it was FREEZING! There was also a massive queue to get in.

We went back at the night because there is a (or there was a) light show. That was better than expected and of course, what should catch my eye, but the lantern below.

Lake Suwa coming soon…

Thanks,
Emily