on the rail again

we  left Kyoto on the Shinkansen to Nagoya,  what better to eat on the train than Melty Kiss Whips,   I discovered the green tea whips in Tokyo and didn't get the strawberry ones, luckily I found them in Kyoto and lots of other varieties.

 We changed trains to head to Nagano, I did plenty of knitting and took some countryside snaps,  the boys were lucky enough to see some monkeys from the front of the train and came back to get Chris but no more. At Nagano it was lunch time and we had 50 minutes to wait for our bus, hot toast and a coffee went down well.. I am amazed that most of the toast in Japan is 2.5 cm thick and soft white bread. We had been getting glimpses of heavy snow but our bus ride to Nozara Onsen was all snow.

Nozara Onsen had been the winter Olympics site in 1998 and its easy to see why.  We left the bus and had to drag our luggage down the streets to our Ryokan,  we were not that happy with our room and a long talk between Chris and the manager saw us changed to a room with a view the next morning.  We went for a quick walk around the streets, tried to find some vegetarian but the tofu is all cooked with fish sauce,  found Pasta di pasta due, not the greatest pasta but an interesting take on pasta with mushrooms and nori. It was early to bed as Chris and the boys were to head to the ski school early the next morning.  We had a delicious Japanese breakfast sitting on the floor cushions, lots of Australians at the hotel with us and we all were pretty uncomfortable sitting Japanese style. After they had left,  I had a relax, looked at the computer, did some knitting and then headed uphill to the moving pathway to join the others for lunch.  They were delayed, so I ordered a caffe latte at a machine in a shop and then took the ticket to get my coffee. Saves translation issues. Everyone had had a good lesson and Oskar was excited to show me his new skill.  We had some noodles, Chris had found a waiter who understood our need for vegetarian. They went back to their lesson.

 and I went to explore the town. There is snow everywhere and lots of running water from the hot springs, which sure makes a contrast..  There are 15 public onsen in the town and some for just foot baths,  but our ryokan has their own private onsen so we didn't need to venture nude in public.   

 Walking round the town I tried the panorama feature on my new camera.  I had an apple steam bun, we wanted to try them last night but they were all sold out so I didn't want to miss out again.  The apples in Japan are gigantic and very tasty, I have never seen so much snow in one place and the sky gave the indication that there was more to come

We didn't realise until too late that it is necessary to book for dinner, the restaurants are very tiny and quickly fill up with hungry skiers after 6, we were lucky enough  to find another  place called Billiken.  they sure know how to make pizza in Japan.  For meat eaters you could even have horse meat.