Into Nagano and the Sanada Clan

One of the good things about being on top of a mountain, aside from the view, is that you can only go downhill from there. While this metaphor is often used to describe the fall of greatness or whatever, I'm being literal. We've done so much climbing into the mountains the last several days, today, the only way we can go is down.

We started out by reassembling the trailers for the first time since last Monday...so we could roll them to the nearest 7-11 and ship them once again! Not because of today, but the next two days are all uphill again. I would almost feel like it was cheating, but after seeing the roads they have up here, we wouldn't fit on the previously mentioned sidewalks, on the shoulders in the tunnels or even the sides of the roads with our trailers. That and they are heavy. Anyway, we coasted into town, shipped our trailers to our final cycling destination, Yanaba, got some breakfast and off we went, down to Nagano.

A perfect day for cycling. Notice the ski slopes on the left.

Nagano or bust

Still some snow for the determined skier.

All of the other descents we've made this trip have been fairly relaxing. We don't pedal for half an hour and roll down the mountain, feeling the wind in our hair and enjoying the rewards of our labor. This one was a bit more intense.

That's a lot of turns...

The ride down Myotokusan, the mountain we were on, was steep, the switchbacks were very sharp and very numerous, and the road was narrow. Some places it narrowed to one wide lane. It was also as long as any we'd done. Going down took full concentration and shaved a good year of life off of our brakes. I was forced to stop twice on the way down to rest my hands, I was squeezing the brakes so hard and so often. The other rides down we were enjoying gravity. This one we were fighting against it. It was a lot of fun, don't get me wrong, just not in the same relaxing way the others had been.

After about 40 minutes of working our way down the mountain, the descent opened up into a small town, where it leveled off a slight amount and we were able to see the Nagano valley.

After this, it was an easy ride into Nagano proper. The 20km ride took about 90 minutes, including our stops to rest our hands, so it was still morning. We couldn't check in until 4pm, so we decided to take a day trip into the small town of Matsushiro to visit a historical area. But we weren't going to bike there. We needed a break. So we headed to Nagano Station.

A very modern station in the middle of a pretty sleepy city. Today being Sunday, everyone was out doing things, but only downtown, from the looks of it. And it seems everyone rides their bikes to the station. Why do I say that?

Four rows that stretched for almost 1/4 mile of parked bikes.
We took this picture so we could find ours when we got back!
Can you spot them?

I'd never seen that many bikes parked in one spot, even in Tokyo. We found some coin lockers in the station and stowed our backpacks so we could actually travel light for a little while.

These are all the city mascots of Nagano Prefecture.
Each locker had a different mascot on it.

We hopped on a bus that, after half an hour of very stop-and-go traffic, brought us to the small town of Matsushiro, home of the ancient Sanada clan, big players in the Warring States period or Japan, and one of the more powerful families up to the Meiji Restoration. They also have a main character in the Samurai Warriors video game series. Of course.

There were four different attractions we were interested in. The ruins of Sanada Castle, which were right outside the station.

Restoration completed in 2010

Much of the foundation was still intact, but fire destroyed the main buildings

After that, we walked over to the very well preserved Sanada residence, an excellent example of a wealthy family's compound in the pre-Meiji era. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but there was a smaller home that had a similar feel we were able to photograph. It was very impressive.

The outside of the Sanada residence

Inside, rooms were separated by sliding wall panels that could open up into
a larger area, or partition rooms.

The Sanada residence had many more rooms, some not connected to the main structure

There was also a porch area overlooking the garden.

After the residence, we went to the Samurai School. Yes, there really was a samurai school.

Several large dojos for martial arts training

They also learned literature, poetry and art. They were cultured, well-rounded
guys with sharp swords

The main building was huge, allowing for many classes to occur at the same time

And an archery area. The targets are stored inside

and brought out here for practice

Sword practice demo in one of the dojos. There was more posing and bowing than sparring.

Finally we went to the Sanada Treasure House Museum, where there was a lot of historical stuff, some of it very interesting. Unfortunately, very little was in English, and we're not that well versed in historical kanji, so we missed some stuff, especially in the letters and writings. No pictures of the exhibits allowed, but there was a nice diorama of the whole area at the entrance.

We hopped on the bus to head back to Nagano, stopping at a Coco Curry House for lunch. We had to, The bus stop was literally at the front door of the restaurant. It was fate. Afterwards, we walked back to the station, grabbed all our gear, picked up our rail passes, reserved our Shinkansen seats for the ride back to Tokyo on Thursday, somehow found our bikes and set off in search of the hostel we were staying at.

1166 Backpackers is a full on hostel, with dorm rooms as well as private rooms. Nana-san greeted us and was very helpful with recommendations for things to do and see in Nagano, and marked some on a map for us. The hostel was nice and clean, if cheap. Pleasant mix of people, free coffee and tea, good wifi.

1166 main lounge. 

After cleaning up and getting settled in, we took a walk down to the 7-11 to get a snack (no full dinner needed after Coco Curry) and passed a few interesting shops.

A cat-art store that was closed for the evening, but had some pretty neat art outside

A specialty ice cream shop that used vegetables to enhance the ice cream

Did you expect any less?

The ice cream was really good. I had Honey and Nuts (real honey, amazing) and Sumi had some berry combination that was also quite good. They had some interesting looking stuff, yes with vegetables.

If you look, you'll find some with tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, etc

Back to the hostel, Sean spends the next three hours finishing homework in the lounge, Sumi goes to bed. We have to be up early tomorrow morning for a 5:53am Buddhist morning service at Zenkouji Temple. We'll see how that goes...