I woke up early so i decided to go to the Tsikiji fish markets. Kate had said she wanted to go so I rang them but surprisingly at 10 to 5 this morning Kate didnt seem quite so keen. This morning is the coldest we have had since we got to Japan. I dont know what the temp got down to but I have not felt that cold here before. The two train rides to the market were a lot warmer so that was a bonus. You have to go early if you want to see the tuna auction. It is just...

I got a couple of the station names wrong yesterday so will probably do it again today. After breakfast we headed out. Chris wanted to go to the Pokemon centre so that was the first call. It meant a couple af changes on the train but we got there. Chris and Laura went berzerk in there and bought heaps of stuff. Looked like overpriced junk to me but they loved it. We had to backtrack to get to Shibuya, for THE crossing. It is one of the busiest crossings in the wo...

We left Hakuba this morning backpacker style. We had a hotel booked in Tokyo and no way to get there. I had looked into it and had a plan but nothing booked. We walked to the information ctr and caught the bus to Nagano, luckily it dropped us off at the train station. Bought a ticket on the bullit (shinkansen) to Tokyo. Once in Tokyo we had to negotiate the metro. As it turned out this wasnt too hard. I found an information booth and the lady wrote down direction...

The kids piked out on skiing today cos it is raining a bit. The rain probably turn the snow to slush. There is about $300 worth odf ski hire and lift pass that wont get used. Asan alternative I suggested we go to Matsumoto Castle. They thought it would be good so that is what we did. It was a 45 min walk to the traino then 2 hr in the train and 1/2hr walk to the castle. Matsumoto is over 400 years old and is the biggest 5 tier donjon castle in Japan. It was prett...

This is a favourite place for us cos we can ski the runs with canfidence and also start to look at more challenging runs. We have named a few of our favourites mainey, ski school and KFC etc. KFC cos it goes past the KFC that is half way up the mountain. There are lifts everywhere and quite a few meet in a central area half way up and there is a cafe and KFC right there. The weather is getting warmer and today is another heat wave at 8deg. This makes the snow slu...