Day 6: matsumoto & bessho onsen

*back dated entry*

today our morning agenda was to visit matsumoto castle.....

breakfast on the train

train ride to matsumoto

matsumoto station

matsumoto map

entrance to matsumoto castle

matsumoto castle

park inside matsumoto castle

exhibit 1

exhibit 2

super steep staircases

 inside the castle was like a mini museum, it had different exhibits but mostly were items used during the war time & about the architecture.... one thing that i would definitely remember from the castle was the super steep stairs.... my god, 61degree stairs lea.... i was practically climbing vertically!!!! & i strained my thigh on the way up =( since the stairs were so steep, i was like sliding down the stairs when i came down.... really tiring & i couldnt imagine how did the ninja survived last time when they had to climb up & down the castle numerous per day

i really liked the matsumoto castle surrounding & you must go up the castle to have a nice view of the area.... the japanese never failed to amaze me in the way they structure the area.... after a good climb, we walked back to the station to go our next destination & along the way we passed by this temple with lots of people so we popped by to take a look =p

lots of people praying

famous roll cake in japan

& our next destination was bessho onsen.... to reach there you have to change to a local line from ueda station

ueda station

train to bessho onsen

bessho onsen

train station

local train

bessho onsen map

bessho onsen is a very small town but it had quite a number of public bath which was the reason why i wanted to visit this place... we first surveyed the area before deciding to try out which bath.....

you can see from the photos that this place is pretty simple town, dont have any high rise buidling & one of the main attraction in this town is kitamuki kannon.... so naturally we had to visit that place =)

shops along the route to kitamuki kannon

kitamuki kannon

the temple was pretty small but the view was superb there.... since we went during winter, most places were covered in snow but i think the place would look amazing with different colours during other seasons.....

oyu

oyu is one of the most famous public bath in the area but it looked abit run down so we were abit skeptical to try out.... so in the end we went to the biggest bath in the area = aisome no yu which was located just opposite the station...

aisome no yu

i never been to a public bath before, previously i went to the onsen theme park in tokyo but it was very different from normal bath... for normal bath, you had to bring your own towels & the baths were much smaller compared to the theme parks.... since we went during new year holiday, the place was filled with people..... but it's still nice to enjoy a hot bath in the cold weather.... after a good bath, we head back to nagano...

on the way back from bessho onsen

dinner

cake from lawson

yummy cream

so that marks the end of our trip to nagano.... i would say nagano is more suitable as a stop by place rather than for actual staying cause there wasnt much food places in the area.... after this trip, i think it's better to spend abit more time on the train to travel to places rather than shifting to a different hotel especially when you carry heavy luggage.... these 2 days we ended up traveling on the train pretty often even when nagano is relatively near to the places we went... so do plan your trip wisely =)