First Trip to Nagano (Looking Back)

Chris Royer

Back in 2010 when I was in Japan at an internship in Matsudo, Japan, I had a few weeks off in late March due to the changing of the school years (the Japanese school year starts in April). I had recently purchased the seishun 18 kippu (青春18切符), which is a pass issued three times a year for young people to travel around Japan on the local train system. They come with 5 days worth of all you can ride local trains and I had already used one of the days of this on a trip around southern Chiba. Now I was ready for a two day trip to Nagano, home of the 1998 Olympic Games and some snow monkeys.

The trip out to Nagano on local trains took quite a long time, I didn’t get to Nagano city until early-mid afternoon even though I departed Matsudo on one of the first trains. The trains stopped for half an hour in Matsumoto, Nagano, so I ran out to see Matsumoto Castle, one of the last 12 original Japanese castles left in Japan. The castle was nice, but I didn’t have time to go inside (which I retrospectively regret now that I want to go into each of the 12 original castles of which I’m more than half complete). I then I ran back to the train station to catch the train to Nagano city.


The primary purpose of my visit to Nagano city was to see some of the facilities from the 1998 winter Olympic games. I basically just saw the ice skating ring which was interesting-ish, but at the same time it was a little underwhelming. I walked in the facilities and around the facilities. It was pretty rainy and miserable, so I didn’t really feel like doing much else. Upon the long walk back to Nagano station, I happened by the grocery store. The prior week, the school that I interned at was having Japanese prefecture research projects to be presented in English. Several students had the topic of Nagano and every time someone talked about Nagano they talked about how you needed to try an apple. It actually sort of became a running joke with the other intern. So when I walked by the grocery store, I bought a pair of Nagano apples which I tried later that night. The apples in Nagano are actually very different from apples in several ways, for one they are much bigger than apples that I’m used to and they’re much sweeter, so I agree with all those student presentations… Nagano apples are pretty good.

I then took a train out to another site of the winter Olympics, the area where most of the skiing took place, Hakuba. The train ride was gorgeous, going past snow capped mountains and large lakes underneath them reflecting the very images. I arrived at Hakuba well past dark and walked out to my place where I was staying the night. I stayed at a hostel, this technically would have been my first hostel/backpackers where I had to share a room, however as I was arriving after peak season, nobody else was staying and I had the room to myself. The hostel was nice enough what with internet and even a free ticket to a nearby onsen (hot bath), however, I didn’t take up the chance to use the hot bath and instead just spent my time on the internet with the laptop I brought with me.



The next morning, I woke up and caught the train out to Nagano and then from their I took the train out to Yamanouchi for the main purpose of my trip the visit to the Japanese macaques or snow monkeys (which makes this post the part 3 of the Year of the Monkey series). As a kid, I always thought the snow monkey was the most interesting monkey and my sister even had a snow monkey doll, of course I had no idea at that time that the monkeys lived in Japan, I thought they lived with the polar bears and penguins. This was my third experience with wild monkeys, but this was the first time seeing them in the snow and seeing them in a hot spring making this a special treat. I spent about an hour there watching them and feeding them seeds which made for very nice pictures. I was especially lucky on the snow front because the snow around this time of year isn’t there everyday. I saw so many cute monkeys and so many baby monkeys huddling together to keep warm. The monkeys usually avoided people, but they did let you get somewhat close to them, but if you got too close they would run away (unless you had food). I didn’t buy any food for them, but I picked up some that someone dropped. After fully enjoying the monkeys, I took the train back into Nagano and visited a nice temple before taking the long 7 or so hours of trains back to home.

Length of trip: 2 days (Wed, Mar. 24– Thu, Mar. 25, 2010), 1 night.
New cities visited: Matsumoto, Nagano, Hakuba, Yamanouchi.
New prefectures visited: Nagano.



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