The morning started with gruel - literally. Breakfast was either super thick white toast or okayu, which is Japanese rice gruel, a bit like thin porridge. Buoyed up for the day by this sustenance, we walked to the hire car office via the tourist office at Nagano Station. There they gave us several useful maps. The car we hired was a small Mazda automatic. We set off with some maps that really didn't give the information required for driving, yet somehow arrived ...

Mainly travelling today. We ate breakfast in a Coffee House near our hotel and then caught a taxi to Kyoto Station. From there we took the Hikari Shinkansen to Nagoya and then the Shinano express to Nagano. On the way we passed through Ena again. Arriving at Nagano we managed to identify our hotel on the city map, a couple of blocks from the station. We are staying at the Smile Hotel and looking at the room plan we have one of the larger rooms. In the guide b...