West Japan
Day 4: Today was a traveling day for us.
We started the day with 2.5 hours Thunderbird shinkansen (bullet train) ride
from Kyoto to Kanazawa.
At Kanazawa, we went to Kenrouken and Kanazawa Palace
Gaden. Kenrouken is part of the palace garden. The garden was huge and
beautiful. You can see rope tents over the trees as they prepare for winter.
The purpose of this rope tent is to protect the trees and/or branch from snow
during winter. I seriously could stay at this garden the whole day and I wish
to have a garden like this in my future home. It’s just breathtakingly
beautiful. There’s nothing much at Kanazawa Palace
Garden but we went inside the gate and saw that the gate was made up of slabs
of wood on top of each other. If you knock on these woods, you’ll not here any
hollow sound as it’s pure wood.
At 2.14pm, we took train to Naetsu before
changing train to Nagano and finally head to Matsumoto.. I found that the
Japanese very friendly people and very helpful. Every time we went somewhere,
there are always local people that offered their help. At Kanazawa, while
waiting to book our tickets to Matsumoto, a lady helped us to get in touch with
the JR staff to book our tickets. At Naetsu, a guy told us that he was going to
Nagano as well and asked us to follow him to ensure that we got on the right
train. Before boarding the train at Naetsu, we met this old man that said he’s
been to Malaysia 20 times and have friends in Malaysia (Mr Tan who works at
Hitachi and Mr Chin, a tour guide in Penang). From Nagano, it was another 1
hour and 15 minutes to get to Matsumoto, our final destination for the day.
Once we’re back in Matsumoto, we went to
Matsumoto Castle. It’s different to other castle that we previously saw. This
castle is multi-storey and we’ll be coming back tomorrow to explore the inside
of the castle. We just spent the rest of the day around Matsumoto city and
going from one convenient store to another to buy foods for dinner and some
snacks. Our favourite convenient store was Lawson as they have this cheap
onigiri that we loved to eat.
Day 6: Today was the first day that we
experienced authentic Japanese breakfast. Since we missed our breakfast
yesterday, we made sure that we ate it to today as our accommodation comes with
breakfast and it’ll be a waste if we don’t eat it. The Japanese breakfast
consisted of rice, grilled salmon, salted vegetables, grilled thick egg cakes,
miso soup and apple. Apple is the symbol of Nagano Prefecture (where Matsumoto
is located). I think that’s why they served apple to us. After a fulfilling
breakfast, we head to Matsumoto Castle stopping at Timepiece Museum on the way
to take photo.
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| First shinkansen ride. |
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| The shinkansen |
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| Beautiful Kanazawa Garden |
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| The trees protected by rope tent |
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| Nagaya and Yagura of Kanazawa Palace |
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| Kanazawa Palace at the back |
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| Kahoku-mon gate of Kanazawa Palace |
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| Kanazawa JR Station |
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| Goodbye Kanazawa, we're heading to Naetsu |
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| Bye Naetsu, we're heading to Nagano |
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| The scenery on the way to Nagano |
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| Apples: Nagano's icon |
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| outside Nagano JR station |
Matsumoto was a small town. Everything was
concentrated within the vicinity of the station area and the shops close very
quite early as when we reached Matsumoto at 8.30pm, most of the shops were
already close. From the station we head straight to our accommodation.
Day 5: Today we woke up very early as we
want to catch the first train to Kamikochi at 6.32am. By 6.10am, we were
already at the train station as the train was not very frequent and we want to
fully utilise our time here. We only have the whole day today and tomorrow
morning to explore this area.
The journey to Kamikochi took about 2
hours; half an hour train ride to Shinshimashima and another 1.5 hour bus ride
from Shinshimashima to Kamikochi. As we were out so early, we even miss our
breakfast at the accommodation. The view along the way was very beautiful; well
Kamikochi is also known as the Japanese Alps. You can see that the trees are
changing colours indication that its mid autumn and winter is coming soon.
Once we arrived there, it was quite cold.
Colder than we expected and we were not prepared for this weather. Here, we
took the 4 hour walking track to Shimura Bridge and made a loop back to the
starting point. On the way there, it was a bit disappointing as we didn’t get
to see much beautiful scenery. It’s not like there none at all, there’s a few
but not what we expected. On our way back we crossed Mryojin Bridge the scenery
was a lot prettier.
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| Our train to Shinshimashima |
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| The bus to Kamikochi |
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| The start of our 4 hour walk |
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| Kappa Bridge |
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| Shinmura Bridge |
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| Our turning point |
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| The scenery here |
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| If we're here a month earlier all the trees will still have their leaves |
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| On our way back to Kappa Bridge |
We missed one place called Toisheoike (Taisho pond), one
stop before Kamikochi. It’s a water reservoir with snowy topped mountain at the
back. You can see the reflection of the mountain on the water. We only know
about this place on our way back to Matsumoto when our bus passed the place. I
managed to snap a photo of the area from the bus. But, if we stopped and took
photo here it would be breathtakingly beautiful.
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| The sun came out when we're about to leave Kamikochi |
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| Taisho pond with Mt. Hotaka and Yakedake at the back |
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| At the bus station waiting for the train to arrive |
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| Ushitsunagi-Ishi |
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| at the entrance of Nawate street, Matsumoto |
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| A castle shaped bookstore |
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| Matsumoto castle at dusk |
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| Matsumoto Castle at night |
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| Enjoying authentic Japanese breakfast |
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| Timepiece Museum |
Once we reached the castle, we showed our pre-paid
tickets that we bought from our hotel lobby for ¥300 for the castle and city
museum (opposite the castle). The actual prices of the tickets were ¥600 for
each of the attractions. The castle was six storeys high and it was built for
war purposes. You can see small rectangular and square holes that they used to
fire weapon during the war period. The castle was not that big but I was
attracted to the moon viewing room on the west side of the castle. The room was
actually like a veranda/balcony type of room and it’s very calm here as you can
see the trees and palace ground from here.
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| Matsumoto Castle |
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| The view from the castle |
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| Exhibitions inside the castle |
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| A place where the weapons were kept during war |
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| Moon viewing room on the west side of the castle |
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| Outside view from moon viewing room |
Next, we went to the city museum as we
already have the entrance tickets. There was nothing much here, just the
history of the city. Then we head to Karakuri Clock. At every hour there’s a
small performance here, the performance starts at 10am till 5pm daily. When we
arrived at the clock, it was 5 minutes to 10am. Sharp at 10am, the sphere ball
opened horizontally and Japanese dolls came out with karakuri balls dancing
around in circles. When we thought that the performance was about to end,
another set of dolls came out. This time it was male dolls with musicals
instruments, it looked like they were the one playing the music that was played
along with their performance.
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| Matsumoto Castle from City Museum |
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| Exhibitions inside city museum |
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| Karakuri Clock |
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| At 10am sharp it opened for the first show |
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| Second show |
After the performance ended, we head back
to our accommodation to get our backpacks, check out and head to the train
station. We went to get tickets to Tokyo and managed to book the 11.08am train
to Shinjuku, Tokyo. The journey to Tokyo took about 2.5 hours.
I’ll stop here first and continue about
Tokyo and other places in a later post..
Till then~
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| Bye Matsumoto, heading to Tokyo |
Till then~
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