Karuizawa to Nagano
Another amazingly beautiful breakfast this morning before checking out of the hotel for a shuttle bus ride to the train station. Today we took the bullet train to Nagano.
This is a terrible picture of the bullet train but it comes and goes so fast it's hard to get a good picture. I'll try to get a better one later.
It was a very fast trip to Nagano (host city of the 1998 Winter Olympics) and we enjoyed the bullet train very much. It is super quiet and smooth. We all wished we could have ridden the train longer. When we arrived in Nagano we had a short walk to our hotel. Love the cool wooden gate at the entry to the station. The top part of it is actually a bowl.
The hotel lobby was beautiful!
After we checked in and dropped off our luggage we boarded our private coach to the Jigokudani Monkey Park. David and I had both really been looking forward to this adventure. We could hardly wait to see the "snow monkeys" bathing in the hot springs. It was a rainy day and the trail up to see the monkeys was very muddy. Thankfully at the trail head there was a small hut renting boots. What a great business! It was about a 45 minute hike with lots of beautiful scenery along the way. We could not get enough of these cute monkeys and spent a few hours there. Here are some pictures . . . aren't they cute?
We really had to drag ourselves away from watching them play -- but we had to hike down quickly, grab a bite to eat and get on the bus! We ordered our "light lunch," and David practiced his Japanese and ordered himself a piece of cheesecake. Except that he accidentally ordered EIGHT pieces of cheesecake!!! The waitress kept delivering piece after piece of cheesecake and we finally figured out what happened! It was pretty hilarious and the four people at our table managed to eat five pieces!
We climbed back on bus and rode back to the hotel. David and I were both exhausted so we decided we would skip the group dinner that night and just pick up some snacks and eat in our room. We texted our tour leader and he came to our room to talk us out of skipping the dinner because it was such a nice place and such good food that he didn't want us to miss it. Soooooo, we bucked up and went and we are very glad we did! The restaurant, called Fujiya Gohonjin, is in a 1923 building and it is gorgeous. The food was spectacular. One of our favorite meals of the entire trip! The first course was shaved ham and a "salad" of asparagus spears, apples and I can't remember what else. The second course was some of the best asparagus we have ever eaten with red sauce, a fried egg and parmesan cheese baked on it.
The third course was a pasta dish and the fourth course was a risotto dish. Both were very, very good. We both wished we could have had more risotto. It may seem strange that we had two pasta dishes in a row. It's because the other diners were having seafood dishes and we don't eat seafood. It was fine with us!
Dessert was very pretty. It was strawberry mousse and it was delicious!
We did have an interesting thing happen at the restaurant. One of our tour mates, Richard, went to the men's room. While he was standing there, he suddenly felt the room shake and could hear cutlery and plates shaking outside the door. We had an earthquake! A few other people felt it too but we did not. We are very happy it wasn't more serious!
The dinner was elegant and delicious and we are very happy we decided to go -- even though we were completely exhausted. Luckily we were able to get a very good night's sleep.
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