Tokyo to Nagano

Here are some pics from the first leg of our travels. I'm just figuring out how this photo thing works on Blogger, so bear with me if it gets a bit weird...

Mark and the Shinkasen 

The bullet trains are so cool!

Waiting for the train at Tokyo

So navigating through the train stations with six months worth of luggage was WAY fun, but we made it with few problems.

Our room in the ryokan in Nagano

Lovely tatami room

The street outside the ryokan, leading to the temple

So this next group of pictures is from the Zenko-ji temple in Nagano.

 I love the signs in Japan! This one was outside the fire department...

Happy houses scare fire!

Tortugas!

We still haven't figured out who the little guy on the right is, but Mark and I call him the Happy Badger. We see him all over the place, and I am growing very fond of him...

The Happy Badger

Here are a few more pics of our ryokan. It was in a quiet little pedestrian street, in the temple grounds. I found sleeping on the futon beds surprisingly comfortable! I was a bit worried when I first saw them, thinking it would be like sleeping on the floor. It was like being on a really firm mattress, and we slept comfortably on them in all the places we stayed for the next week.

View of the ryokan

Ready for bed!

Mark in his yukata

 And now for what many of you have been waiting for: the food! I'm a huge fan of Japanese breakfast, especially the nori sheets that you dip in shoyu and eat with rice. I never really figured out what the other things were, but I ate them all up.

Japanese breakfast - yum!

More fire department things, because I thought they were cute.

Fire man on the manhole cover 

Angry houses make fire sad.

So that's Nagano! We weren't there for very long, but I really enjoyed our stay. Next up, Takayama!