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January 10, 2024 After a breakfast to close our stay at Takimi we went to Tsumago to hike the Nakasendō. The Nakesendō is a post road that extended from Tokyo (aka Edo) to Kyoto. It was one of five roads and the one most often used by nobility. The other major road went along the…

January 9, 2024 Today we backed up with some clean clothes to leave Nagano. We had a quiet morning at the inn and learned some Origami from the owners and had breakfast. For today, we set off into rural Japan. In the way we stopped at Matsumoto Castle. This was the first castle we have…

January 8, 2024 Today is the Coming of Age day (observed) in Japan. Not that it was a big deal for us apart from some closures but thought I would share. What is relevant is that Nagano got its first major snow overnight. There was snow everywhere and it was lovely. We hoped the would…

January 7, 2024 Today is our last day in Tokyo for now….first a goodbye to our Mt. Fuji view… We packed up (everything fit back in the bags) boarded the train for Kawagoe and then on to Nagano. Kawagoe is about an hour north of Tokyo. We were not here to see a the bell…

January 6, 2024 With our first journey successful we decided to embark on another adventure outside the city. This time we ventured to Kamakura. The beach was lovely and there were a lot of people surfing. From there we walked to the Daibutsu statue. It is a giant Buddha statue and was impressive to see.…

January 5, 2024 Today we decided to get a closer look at Mt. Fuji. The first question was how best to get there. The Japanese rail system is amazing but has all the complexity and ambiguity of a market system. Lots of providers. Many different ways to do things. A lot of knowledge is assumed.…

January 4, 2024 We ventured out to explore the areas of Asakusa and Ueno. One of the things that a lot of people were doing in Asakusa was renting Kimonos and wearing them around but we did not wander down that path. We can ask the AI to make that picture for us in the…

January 3, 2024 The pattern continued of awaking to a hotel buffet breakfast. This one obviously had a distinctive Japanese flavor with Miso soup on the buffet and a new favorite – banana juice. When traveling you remember all sorts of stuff you heard before….like the fact that Japanese have celebrate New Years for several…

January 2, 2024 We arrived in Japan on the morning of the 2nd and set about settling in. We made it to the hotel without trouble, found some food nearby, and rested. 🙂 Adjusting to all the time changes has been a challenge but we are good and looking forward to this next part of…

January 1, 2024 We had left the door to our balcony open and heard the call to prayer. We went to breakfast and the hotel really one upped the Raddison in Oslo. However, the day before we had started to hear about a rally that was plane ed to culminate at the Galata bridge in…