Every year, the third grade students at the junior high
school I teach at go on a school trip to Nagano. Every year, they come back and
write diaries in English about all the delicious food they ate, as well as the
beautiful sights they saw. Then, they
end their diary entries with “Have you ever been to Nagano? Please visit Nagano!”
Every year, I settled for just getting souvenirs from the
teachers and students that went. But not
this year. This year, I can finally say that I have visited Nagano.
My brother and I decided to go to Nagano this past weekend! We
spent the night in Tokyo on Friday, and left to catch the 8:30 a.m. bullet
train from Shinjuku Station on Saturday. He had his
JR Pass, which provides
unlimited use of the JR trains across the country for foreigners visiting
Japan. However, I had to buy a ticket
for the
Shinkansen, or bullet
train. I got the unreserved ticket,
which cost 6,380 yen one-way from Shinjuku to Matsumoto station. We were worried that we wouldn’t get seats on
the train, but we were very fortunate that the train started from Shinjuku, so
we were able to find seats pretty easily.
After about 3 hours on the train, we finally arrived at
Matsumoto Station!
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| Matsumoto Station |
We decided to go to the hotel we reserved online after we
arrived so that we wouldn’t have to carry our things with us around the city. We stayed at Hotel Ote (ホテル大手),
which was about a 5 minute walk away from Matsumoto Station. The room itself was pretty small, but it was
pretty cheap and the location was convenient.
It was right across the street from a 7-11, so it made getting breakfast
each morning nice and easy hahaha.
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| View from the door |
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| Twin beds |
After dropping off our luggage we went off to find a place
where we could eat lunch. We decided on
a Japanese soba restaurant called Soba Kurabu Sasaki (
蕎麦倶楽部佐々木),
which was a 15 minute walk from Matsumoto Station. My brother got the Mori Soba, the restaurant’s
recommendation. I got the Kamotsuke
Soba, cold soba served with a hot duck meat soup. Our sobas were delicious, and the people who
worked at the restaurant were extremely nice and helpful. For anyone who wants
to try Matsumoto Soba, I strongly recommend this restaurant! (English menu provided, staff also speaks
very good English) (Mori Soba- 1,000 yen; Kamotsuke Soba- 1,500 yen)
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| Kamotsuke Soba from Soba Kurabu Sasaki |
Now that we had eaten, we were ready to explore Matsumoto
City! The waitress at the soba
restaurant gave us a map and directions to Matsumoto Castle, so we headed there
first. From the restaurant it was about
a 10 minute walk (from the station it’s about 15). The fee to get into the castle was 610 yen. The views from the castle were spectacular,
and I really enjoyed seeing the gun collection inside the castle. There were 6 floors which tourists could go
to, but the staircases in the castle got very crowded. The staircase from the 5th to the
6th floor were not only crowded, but the steps were very high! There was an old man who almost slipped going
down the stairs just as I was about to go up. Luckily there was a rail so he
managed to not fall down, but it was still pretty scary. I was pretty worried about falling as well.
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| Matsumoto Castle |
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| Part of the artillery collection inside Matsumoto Castle |
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| View of the castle grounds from the Moon Viewing Room of Matsumoto Castle |
Once we left the castle, we went to the museum that was
right in front of Matsumoto Castle. The
610 yen admission fee that we had paid for the castle also included admission
to the museum. The museum had a lot of
interesting things showing the history of Matsumoto, as well as yearly events
that occur. I really liked the treasure
ship with the seven dolls.
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| Treasure Ship |
It was still pretty early, so we decided to visit the Former
Kaichi Primary School, the oldest elementary school in Japan. I wasn’t expecting it to look so nice on the
outside, but I was surprised to see that it looked a lot newer than the elementary
schools that I teach at hahaha.
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| Former Kaichi Primary School, the oldest elementary school in Japan |
Afterwards, we made our way back to Nawate Street to look
around and to buy a taiyaki! One of my
teachers recommended eating taiyaki from
Furusato. I got the anko (sweet bean paste) taiyaki
which cost about 150 yen. It was good,
but really filling.
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| Furusato |
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| Anko (sweet bean paste) Taiyaki |
For dinner, we decided to eat another one of Matsumoto’s
famous dishes,
sanzoku-yaki, or fried
chicken. We went to Hyakurotei (
百老亭), which was about a 10 minute walk from Matsumoto
Station. We got the
sanzoku-yaki and rice set, which was about 1,100 yen. There was way too much food for me though, so
I ended up giving half of my chicken to my brother. The chicken was good, but the portion size
was too much for me. If you decide to go
here, I would recommend that you get the rice set if you like to eat a lot of
food.
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| Sanzoku-yaki |
We had both eaten a lot of food that day, so we decided to walk to the other side of the city that we hadn’t been to yet. As I was walking through Matsumoto City, I felt that it was the perfect combination of both traditional and modern. My brother and I had spent most of the day in the traditional part of the city, but the other half of the city had department stores and other big buildings. Tourists can enjoy seeing temples and castles during the day, and end the day with a couple drinks at one of the many bars that are in Matsumoto. However, instead of going to a bar, my brother and I decided to end our first day with a creampuff from
Masamura.
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| Masamura, view from outside |
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| Inside Masamura |
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| Cream puff from Masamura |
There were many kinds of creampuffs to choose
from, but we decided to get a normal creampuff with whipped cream filling (216
yen). My brother said that it was the
best creampuff that he had ever had in his life. I thought that it was pretty delicious
too. It was definitely the best way to
end our first night in Nagano.
Tiko
