27th
Its a 4 hour bus ride from Tokyo to Nagano. We take the bus over the train, as the Shinkansen is not cheap, and i have never driven on the roads in Japan, so it will be a good experience. The bus is as punctual as the train and departs on time to the minute. The drive has plenty of beautiful country side and snow capped alps. We one stop once at a rest stop for 15 minutes, which is enough to stretch the legs. The driver tells us that the bus will leave at 1.15pm which it does. We arrive into Nagano at exactly 3.50pm, the time that is stated in the timetable. Talk about punctual service.
We walk the 500 metres to our hotel for the next 4 days. No more airbnb place for a while as there dont seem to be many this side, west side of the island. The hotel is very nice, and our room is huge by japanese standards. We even have real beds, unlike tokyo where we slept on mattresses on the floor.
Our room overlooks the train line and Nagano train station, so we get to see the trains come and go, even the Shinkansen.
We take a walk around the area and find a supermarket to get some breakfast supplies.

28th
What a great nights sleep in a real bed. We both slept really well and the noise from the trains did not bother us at all. Opening the blinds reveals a magnificent day with nothing but blue sky and a maximum temp of 19.
Today we take a bus into the mountains to visit the Snow monkeys. The monkeys live near a hot spring and will sit in the hot springs right through winter to keep warm. The bus ride is 1 hour and has some stunning views. You have to walk 1.5ks through a beautiful forest to get to the entrance of monkey park. Now as the snow is melting the path is very wet and muddy.
After paying the entrance fee we finally lay eyes on the Macaque monkeys. They are everywhere, must be 100 or more from little babies to adults. The adults are about 3 foot tall. They are busy foraging in the snow for food. We are almost invisible to the monkeys, as they are not bothered at all by people. You can get up very close to them and they will even come and sit next to you.
Only a few decide to go and sit in the hot water, as the outside temperature is quite warm. It is so funny watching the little ones play fighting.
It was a great day at monkey park, the monkeys were very entertaining and well worth the effort to get here.
Now we are back in town and head to a discount clothes store where Shauna buys herself some snow boots for $7, as she is heading to the snow field with her boyfriend when he arrives in April 10th. I wont be travelling with, instead i will head to Toyama to see the Snow tunnel and do some hiking in the Alps

29th
Today we decide to walk the main street and see the Zenkoji Temple. Well we are in for a great surprise. There is a huge parade heading to the temple, and we have arrived just before it starts. The route is lined with very talented Japanese drummers along the way playing some very addictive beats.
We follow the parade up to the Temple where it is packed with thousands of people, and plenty of TV crew. Its a little hard to explore the temple area, so after watching some of the ceremonies we leave and will come back tomorrow.
The rain holds out for the procession, but it starts to drizzle as we leave the temple. Cant complain as we have been really lucky with the weather.
The rest of the days is spent wandering the main part of town

30th
Plenty of blue sky this morning. So its off to the Zenjoki Temple to see what we missed yesterday. There are still hundreds of people here, and we take a few hours to see the temples. Now as its a nice sunny day, we walk the streets for a few hours discovering lots of cool little lanes and shops. Nagano is a really nice town, spotlessly clean and full of extremely polite people.
Tomorrow we are taking the Shinkensan to a town called Kanazawa, on the west coast of Japan. My only concern is the weather, i think we are in for some rainy days