A Little More of Matsumoto and Back to Asakusa!

Our train for Tokyo didn't depart until 11:00, so we had some time to kill in the morning. We decided to check out one of the nearby shrines, again on the recommendation of the woman at the front desk, and a "famous" well. More on that later. First, Yohashira Shrine:

Outside of the shrine. Nice.

Inner shrine. Note the nice taiko drum.

On the way to the "famous" well, we spotted an interesting work of "art" (I'm using a lot of air quotes in this post) next to a police box.

I'll let you come up with your own caption

So, the well that we were told was famous was certainly nice.

It has its own gazebo and wind socks

And the water was fresh and cold.

People were filling up liter bottles while we were here

But I'm not sure how it's any better than any of the other wells in the city. It is the well used in the Matsumoto city tourism guide, so maybe that's why it's "famous". There are over 20 other wells dotting the city.

Anyway, after that we headed to the station, passing one of the more "impressive" bike shops we'd seen in Japan.

They probably have anything you'd want, but finding it...

The rest of the day was fairly predictable. We boarded the train to Nagano, transferred to the Shinkansen to Ueno, took the Yamanote to Meguro and had Indian food at Rasoi, went to Akihabara to shop, ate some crepes

and noticed Baskin-Robbin's was making inroads in the Japanese market (along with Wendy's and Burger King. We only export the best to other countries)

Baskin Robbin's assimilated well.

Friday was more of the same. Meiji Jingu, Ikebukuro, Ueno. Many of our old favorites. I'll leave you with some of the more amusing pics we came up with.

Nyanko-sensei jambouree

Andersen Bakery Panda Buns. The Panda is Ueno's mascot.

Panda reading a book.

Sanrio characters get serious in a race to determine the most popular one.

Wired Cafe's newest parfait creations. We had to walk an extra mile before eating these.

Some random display of stuffed animals in a store window.

Tomorrow (Saturday), we are going to take a day trip down to Kamakura to visit the Daibutsu, which we haven't seen since 2009, and some of the other attractions in a city full of temples and shrines.

Packing up and Heading to Matsumoto

With the promise of a breakfast afterwards, we were up early to pack up all of our biking gear, then head outside to take apart our trusty bikes and get them ready to be sent on to the airport. Sumi's pedals managed to get very cross-threaded, and she wasn't able to get them off, so I gave it a go. How hard was it?

I broke a stainless steel wrench trying to get them off.

After nearly 40 minutes of fighting with them, I finally managed to remove both pedals. We'll see whether just the pedals or the whole assembly needs replacing when we get home. For now, though we were packed and ready to eat.

Bacon and eggs? Sure, why not!

After a wonderful breakfast, we were driven to the "station". It was an unmanned set of two platforms (one for each direction). The trail to the platform was barely more than an indentation in a bunch of weeds.

Yanaba! Yanaba desu!

Staring off in contemplative wonder...

All the trains in and out of Yanaba were "Wanman", or one man trains.

Aforementioned one man train.

The ride into Matsumoto was uneventful. Once there, we headed to the Circle K convenience store across the street from the station and shipped off everything but what we could fit in our backpacks to Narita to await our flight on Monday. We hand several hours before we could check in to our hotel, so we took a walk down to Matsumoto Castle, one of the three major castles in Japan (the others being Himeji and Osaka). It was huge.

Very impressive main castle with two annex buildings

There were people dressed in "period costumes".
Clearly not a real ninja. We saw him.

She was trapped posing for a bunch of creepy old men with very large cameras. And Sumi.

Yukimura Sanada returns to battle!

The inside of the castle was quite interesting, but un-photogenic. There were many novel approaches to constructing the tower, including a "hidden" floor that was used for storage and a bunch of very large beams supporting multiple floors.

After the castle, we still had some time, so (pun intended), we headed to the Timepiece museum. Yup, a museum of clocks. I like clocks. The whole front of the museum was the largest grandfather clock in Japan.

Now THAT'S a clock!

Inside, I geeked out at all the cool old and interesting timepieces. Sumi sportingly tagged along. I won't bore you with details, but I will bore you with a few pics.

19th century marine chronometer

Edo period (1603-1868) alarm clock

A chandelier clock, so people dining could just look up and see the time.

We were finally able to get into our hotel, so we got settled and asked about coin laundry (our first time in a city in some time, we were on our last set of clean clothes). The closest one was a 15 minute bike ride away. Well, we just packed up our bikes and sent them away. "Fortunately", they had some bikes they loaned to guests, so we hopped on the Japanese mamachari bikes and trundled off to the laundromat.

Pretty sweet rides.

In a word, they were short. I pulled the seat up as far as it could go without falling out, and I looked like I was on a child's bike. It must've looked pretty comical. It was also heavy and not easy to pedal, steer or stop. But beggars can't be choosers, and they got us there and back, with all our laundry.

The woman at the front desk also advised us to see the castle at night, when they light it up. That meant we had to stay awake until dark (~8:00pm). So, we got some dinner at a newly opened restaurant called Hokkaido Bang! Bang! It was a pizza parlor that also had all-you-can-drink specials on beer, wine and soda. And wonderful seasoned popcorn. The pizza was good ingredients on cardboard. They do not like to taste their pizza crust in Japan, apparently, so they make it a few molecules thick, I honestly don't think they use yeast.

There was some cheese, and oregano and garlic and something else. Whatever, it rocked.

Very good salads

And pizza on cardboard. The edge of the crust was tasty, though.

We went back to the hotel and got some work done in the lobby until it was dark enough, then headed to the castle.

It was worth coming back at night

A nice end to our first day as "normal" tourists. Tomorrow we head back to Tokyo for a few days of souvenir shopping, eating and maybe a day trip or two.

Across the mountains to Hakuba and Yanaba

Today we had a fairly long day of biking ahead of us: two climbs and 50km. Nothing big, but longer than the last few shorter days we had. We started by continuing our descent...for about 800m followed by a short climb of about 600m.

A typical view from the road. Beautiful area.

The clouds were pretty heavy, even though there was some sunlight here and there. Small, quiet country roads, with about 2 cars every hour or so. Excellent biking. After hitting the crest and heading down the first winding slope, we stopped at a hairpin turn with a shrine to rest our hands from braking and to make sure we didn't lose the route. The road was quite small.

One of those panoramic shots.

The shrine was quiet, but well maintained and obviously still used regularly.

Unintentional lens flare looks kinda artsy

We rested for a bit, enjoying the scenery before continuing on.

Before heading up the last climb of Mount Sobatsubu, we stopped at a little roadside market and grabbed what we thought were senbei crackers. Turns out they were sesame cookies! We found a small retaining wall with some shade to feast on trail mix and cookies!

All three of us...

The last climb took us to a tunnel with a slight bend in it that had to be on purpose. We had no idea what was around the corner until we were on top of it.

Not our pic. We were too scared/smart to stand in front of the
tunnel and take a picture with traffic coming

It's called Hakutaku ridge, and is a famous viewing spot for the western Alps. I can see why.

Requisite selfie

Better view, without our faces spoiling it

One last panorama shot before Sumi took the phone away from me.

OK, only one of us was too scared/smart not to stand in front of the tunnel

The rest of the ride into Hakuba was equally as gorgeous. A lot of downhill coasting, small roads, no cars. An excellent morning ride. Hakuba is a ski area, so the whole ride down to Yanaba was basically city and resorts. Not nearly as photogenic, but relatively fast and easy. Until the requisite mountain to climb to get to our ryokan. We walked.

Raumu Lodge

Raumu was an immaculate lodge run by a very nice couple. They obviously lived there year round, and there were bookshelves lining the entire building, with everything from manga, to a complete set of Harry Potter to Harvard Classics (all in Japanese, of course). The rooms were very spacious.

The sleeping quarters. The other half held the table, cushions and all our junk that we had to pack.

We still needed some dinner, and they recommended a ramen shop down by Lake Aoki, which we had passed on our way in. Yanaba was a tiny place, with not much in the way of year round stores and restaurants, so it was pretty much our only option without hopping on a train. We had an hour to kill before it opened for dinner, so we hopped on our bikes for one last ride, to check out Lake Aoki.

Lake Aoki

There was a nice path that circumnavigated the lake. It was wide enough for two bicycles, so of course they drove their cars and trucks on it, as well. The lake was surrounded by resorts and inns, but they were all set away from the lake and path, so they never intruded on the natural beauty,

When 5 o'clock finally arrived, us and a few other people who were waiting in the parking lot, were seated and fed.

See Bleek is the name. Not sure what language it's from

Sumi's Onion Ramen and Gyoza

My curry and salad and...cheese toast?

It was good food. The cheese toast was actually an open faced ham and cheese sandwich. Full and tired, we made our way slowly back to Raumu for our last night "on the road'. Tomorrow we take the train into Matsumoto, ship out gear to the airport and start acting like normal tourists for a few days.