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Today is the end of Golden Week a week of holidays where the whole country has no work. We decided to explore carrie's town for a few days then head to Nagano, the sight for the 98' olympics. This place was amazing, I only saw 2 westerners the whole time I was there! We stayed in a traditional Japanese hotel which is tall, all dark wood and with lots of stairs and narrow lanes. Our room is great 3 mats, a floor table with seats, balcony with a great view, traditional dressing gowns.... no showers, instead a traditional onsen. Was a bit nervous of my first one.... with the whole group nudity thing with strangers, but they are really good! The bath is boiling hot though so couldn't stay in for too long. We visited the Zenko-ji temple which is enormous with buddha's everywhere, many sick visitors come to rub the buddha which is suppose to cure you, its quite sad actually. We had the best meal of my life in the evening, this little thai/viet/japanese place, really cheap and so tasty. I love Japanese food but it doesn't have much flavour so some spicy food was really nice!
The next day we took a bus to Mt. Togakushi area. I did a 7 hour up hill hike!!!!!! This has to be my favourite place so far, it was so beautiful. There were 5 shrines to see and for each you walk up about 200 hundred steps (just imagine uma thurma walking up those steps in kill bill with water on her back that is literally what it was like!). It was such a hot day too but because your in the mountains there were random piles of snow? At one shrine we saw a traditional Japanese wedding being carried out it was amazing, there is so much ceremony, music, costumes it looked so impressive. We also visited the botanical gardens which were amazing walking on a bridge surounded by water lilys. We went to the nija school where you can see the old weapons and photos and where they did training, then you go into a maze which was quite hard as the walls move and the building goes upside down and you have to find your way out, then through an obsticle course. I tried my ninja skills by throwing some ninja stars (they were real) but my skills aren't that good yet and they kept bouncing back towards me. The last stop was the mirror lake, this is spectacular a huge lake so clear you can see the reflection perfectly of the surroundings, cherry blossom, big green trees and behind it all huge mountains covered in snow. After all that we went off to the izikiya for some food and drinks with Iba, we asked him for directions when we got off the bus and he ended up staying with us all day and showing us where to go. Good job as everything was in Jpanaese and we would have got lost for days! Now I've seen the country I'm off to Tokyo cenre tomorrow where there are more travellers hopefully I will meet some people as I've mostly met locals and carries fellow teachers so far, but its good as its forced me learn a bit of Japanese.
sayonara - dewa mata!!!
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