Matsumoto Castle, Nagano and Skiing
I wanted to see what skiing is like in Japan so M’s spring break gave us an opportunity to do a longer trip out to Nagano. Getting there without a car meant we had to first ride the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Nagoya, then take the Shinano Express up the hills to Nagano. Then from Nagano a bus ride to the mountains of Shiga Kogen. The whole trip would take 6+ hours, so we decided to make a stop in Matsumoto (near Nagano) and stay a night before hitting the slopes.
Matsumoto
Tucked away in this smaller town, lies Matsumoto Castle, which is quite well preserved and one of the most authentic in Japan. While all castles have gone through some stages of rebuilds and renovations, this one is kept to be very original. For castle lovers, it ranks near the top!
The dark exterior gives it a distinctive character, along with an impressive 6 floors towering over the neighborhood.
At what point do stairs become ladders? I asked myself that a lot climbing up to the top floor.
The rest of Matsumoto town was not terribly exciting, there was a “historic” street that was pretty small with a few shops, but we did find a collection of restaurants in one building that all served izakaya style dishes. Some skewers and a local craft beer was pretty yummy.
Shiga Kogen Ski Area
Shiga Kogen is actually a collection of several smaller Ski Resorts all in the same area. Many of them are connected so you can ski at multiple mountains within a day, and you can get a single lift ticket that works at all the parks. There is also a free bus shuttle if you need to head back home after wandering off to another park.
We found a small hotel that included meals and ski rentals, so we were able to borrow everything from ski wear, goggles and helmets! As most hotels in the area, they also have an onsen (hot springs) bath, which is amazing after a day on the slopes. The food was buffet style and decent, but the wifi was quite spotty so that was the only downside. The hotel was centrally located to the ski resorts, and we could ski in and out!
M spent a couple days at the Sugiyama kid’s ski school, and worked on making big turns with a pizza wedge and getting comfortable with lifts and narrower trails! I am a pretty crappy skier myself, only gone a dozen times as a kid and not touching them again until recently. However, I had a lot of fun and hope we can do more skiing in the future! It was late in the season, so pretty warm and the snow feeling a bit slushy at times, but there were hardly any people and we never had to wait for lifts! Overall, we got 2 full days of skiing and a half day before heading back to Nagano. They had a pay as you go type lift tickets, so the last day we got about 20 dollars worth of tickets each, and did 10 runs on the bunny slopes as a family. Pretty cool. All day lift tickets were pretty cheap too, at about $50 USD per day.
The most impressive part of the trip was seeing the older locals taking to the slopes. We met some 80 year old grandmas who were visiting with their ski club, and I can only hope we are that active at that age!
Nagano
On the way home, we stopped by Nagano (the city) for a night. There is an impressive complex of temples named Zenkoji which was fun to check out. Before any major temple, there are often shops and snacks to sample.
A local dish we found is grilled mochi with vegetables inside. Very tasty off the grill!
The gate has a couple of intimidating protectors.
The main temple.
But there’s more temples!
We lucked out and heard them ring the afternoon bell.
Summary
The whole trip was quite relaxing to escape the crowds, and travel to some areas that are a bit off the beaten path. Nagano is also known for spices, so we picked up a tin of 7-spice powder.
Soba is also quite popular in Nagano, we had a few helpings of it along the way. And finally, horse meat is quite popular here as well. We had horse sashimi, which in this case came was “roast” (rib-eye) and leg. I would say it was similar to lean beef. There are cooked dishes as well, but sashimi was definitely the most common way to have it.
We also stayed at the chain hotel Dormy Inn for the first time. The concept is a modern business hotel setting, with western style beds/rooms and an onsite onsen bath. While the rooms are a bit smaller than a traditional tatami room, the hotel felt pretty new and was conveniently located near the train station. It’s a nice option, if you don’t want to venture too far out into the hills and still soak in a bath after a long day of travels. The pricing was quite reasonable too, since dinner is not included. Someone should have told their marketing folks that “dormy” doesn’t sound very posh, but don’t let the name scare you:) It’s actually pretty nice!
A fun feature at our stay, they had “midnight noodles” which was a free bowl of ramen at 9:30pm. A nice touch after some drinks before heading to bed.
