I am on day 7 of the trip when writing, so I am a little behind.

Day four consisted of a jaunt from Tokyo to the Nagano prefecture, with a stop over in Matsumoto. We were out pretty late the night before (3am) and had reservations for an 8am train, which we managed to barely make. Living on the edge!

On the way to Nagano we took a slower, regional train to Matsumoto.

It was a nice train ride, with some beautiful scenery. It was refreshing to get out of the craziness of Tokyo as well.

We arrived in Matsumoto right around 11am, but we were pretty hungry since we missed out on the chance to have breakfast, so we went straight to lunch. A quick Google search led us to a ramen restaurant that was open. It turned out to be a chain (and we have now been there twice), but was still pretty good.

Next we headed over to Matsumoto castle.

On the walk there, we passed through a shrine, as you often do in Japan. We saw a few hints of fall coming. I was really expecting lots of leaf change by November, but not this year.

Matsumoto was beautiful. The area is largely surrounded by mountains, and there are lots of little canals and rivers with bridges. I liked this one.

There was also fresh spring water, complete with ladle (for filling bottles or drinking directly? I don’t know). I was quite delicious though.

I have no details about the history of Matsumoto, either the the city or castle, but I do have pictures.

Eventually I will get around to looking this up. Actually I just did, and it was completed in around 1593-94. Its considered a national treasure of Japan.

Next we took a train and then walked over to a sake distillery that we found on Google Maps.

 

Is that it? That was probably your question. That was our question too. We figured out that yes, it is it. The gentlemen that helped us spoke no english but was very kind. We ended up sharing history and questions / answers via Google translate which was fascinating. We are living in the future! It would have been even cooler if it was a more frictionless experience, but I think that would remove the incentive to learn other languages, and that would be sad. I am a big fan of learning languages. In fact, I think we have been changing between 3-4 different languages throughout on conversations on this trip (Spanish, Italian, Japanese – very little, and English for me).

SAKE!

We tried a few samples, and then were offered a look at the facilities. They produce all of the sake here at this site.

Sake is a wine made from rice, if you aren’t familiar. You can find it served all over Japan, both cold and warm. I like the cold version better personally, which is what we were served at our tasting.

We walked back to the train station to head to the Nagano station. We didn’t really have any plan but figured we would stop by and see what it was like.

Since we had no plan, we just walked from the station to the river, which was about a 45 minute walk. We got a nice view of the mountains from the bridge over the river.

One thing you can’t miss is how orderly Japan is. In most places, everyone walks in the correct areas, lines up for trains and busses, and leaves room for others to pass on escalators. I love it! Good walkers are hard to find!

We took the train back to Tokyo. By the time we returned, everyone was pretty tired and just wanted some quick food, so we had pizza to-go at a place called 800 degrees across from the Shinjuku station. It was pretty good.

That was it for day 4. More writing to do now.. Day five coming soon.