After visiting Matsumoto castle and hiking the Nakasendo trail, our one-month train trip in Japan brings us to Nagano and the Japanese Alps. We arrive in Nagano around 2 PM and retrieve our luggage, previously sent from Kyoto by ta-q-bin.
A little break after 10 days of travelling by train in Japan
At this point, it’s been ten days since we arrived in Japan, and we take our first actual break in Nagano in order to do the laundry, rest a bit (especially after the Nakasendo trail) and review the planning for the coming days. We prepared a full schedule before leaving for this trip, but every few days we review it and decide on what we keep or not, whether it needs adjustments…
Over the days, we’ve become aware of the actual situation in Japan, the few constraints we didn’t know about, but above all the advantages of travelling here, like the fact that you can totally rely on public transportation (which means we need less buffers that planned for example).
For our first evening in Nagano, we take it easy and just stroll a bit the huge Don Quijote next to the station, and grab some cup noodles for diner.
Togakushi
The day after, we enjoy breakfast at the hotel: an authentic Japanese buffet in a room with tatami floor.
Around 7.30 AM, we go to Alpico bus counter, opposite the station, and buy tickets to go visit Togakushi temples. Our bus will depart at 8.36, so we take the opportunity to go back to the station and book our shinkansen tickets for the day after, in direction of Sendai.
The bus tickets for Zenkoji and Togakushi are day tickets, hop-on hop-off style, which makes it easy to visit several destinations over the same day. The ticket costs 3 000 yen (about € 19)*.
Togakushi 5 temples hike
Togakushi is known for its 5 temples that you can visit on foot thanks to hiking trails. It’s also possible to visit them by bus, although they are not along the road and still require a little walk.
We get off at Okusha, the farthest one of the 5 temples, after an hour riding the bus. The weather is way cooler up there than it was in the city center, and it’s raining (not pouring as much as during our visit of Fushimi Inari in Kyoto, but an umbrella is needed still).
The path to the temple is framed with big cypress trees and goes up, alternating stairs and soil. The weather and our physical fatigue make us change our plans, and after reaching the temple, we decide to continue by bus instead of walking the trail of the 5 temples.
We get on the bus and decide to visit the lowest attitude temple, Hokosha, lying on top of a 290-step stair.
Amazing soba near Hokosha
Near the temple grounds, we randomly run across a soba restaurant (soba are a specialty in the Nagano area). It doesn’t look anything special and everything is written in Japanese, there are no pictures on the menu, the entrance is not easy to spot, but we’re starving so we decide to go anyway.
Behind the door, we discover a charming family owned restaurant with Japanese and Western seating. The owner doesn’t speak English but somehow we manage to communicate with our broken Japanese and many gestures. For the menu, in Japanese, Google translate is good enough. We order a cold soba set with tempura, manju and dumplings.
The owner was super kind, although it was not easy to communicate, he seemed really happy to have us. The meal is amazing, flavourful, filling, comforting after the rainy walk. And it cost us about € 20* for two.
When leaving the restaurant, the whole family is waving goodbye and thanking us from the entrance. After coming back from our one-month trip in Japan, this will still be one of our top memories.
Zenkoji temple
Another ride with the bus, and we hop off at Zenkoji. We walk the pedestrian road that leads to Zenkoji, making a few stops here and there to grab an appel pastry, or an ice cream. After a few bites, we visit the temple grounds of Zenkoji.
Last night and thoughts on Nagano
We go back to the hotel by bus in order to prepare our luggage and send them again by ta-q-bin and retrieve them a few days later.
For our second night in Nagano, we want to try another local specialty: Oyaki (dumplings filled with vegetables stuffings). We finally found some in a food corner in a building near the station, where we could buy them heated (but we had to take them back to the hotel, as the food corner didn’t have seating).
Thinking back about Nagano, we would probably stay longer in the area, and go back at a time of the year with less risks of rain, so we could hike the Togakushi. Japan has a lot of mountains, especially in that area, and the time needed to visit places around is longer than near the usual big cities (Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka). Visiting the area might request to go at a slower pace and spend more time in transportation.
Next step of the trip
After spending the night in Nagano, we head to Sendai. After Sendai, we’ll take the shinkansen to Hokkaido. After a few days on the northernmost island of Japan, we’ll go down to Tokyo with a stop in Nikko.
*The prices mentioned are based on the actual prices and exchange rate in application during our trip, in May-June 2023
