Trip to Nagano

Since I came to Japan, I've been down to visit my girlfriend in Nagano twice. She lives in a sleepy town called Komagane, boasting a population of 30,000 people and nestled in a valley in the Japanese Central Alps.

I usually avoid going down to visit her. The town itself is very hard to get to because it's so tucked away, so the nearest bullet train station and airport are hours away. I always take the highway bus, which is cheap (about ￥2000 one way) but takes about 4 hours from Tokyo (not including the additional 10 hours overnight from Aomori to Tokyo). She also lives in a very small apartment about the size of a single-person college dorm room, with added tiny bathroom and kitchenette. In town, there is very little to do, especially when you don't have a car because the bus system is insufficient. Essentially, it's a pretty big waste of time and money to go down to Komagane compared to having her take a trip up to Aomori to visit me.

Nevertheless, it's necessary to give her a break from traveling once in a while and return the favor. This past long weekend, I made the trek down to Komagane. The first time I visited, we hardly did anything because she didn't really have a good idea of the area. This time, we had done more planning and rented a car, so there was more to occupy ourselves with.

First, we went to 光前寺 (Kozenji Temple). I've been a little tired of visiting shrines and temples lately (there are just SO many), but this one was pretty special. Everything was built out of untreated wood, so the structures looked very natural and blended well with the tall cedar trees surrounding the area. They were all very intricately carved too, and I admired the craftsmanship. However, untreated wood is also defenseless against pests, so bugs burrowed millions of tiny holes into the pretty pagoda.

Amazing untreated wood.

The pests thought so too. They didn't allow people to stand on it because it was so structurally compromised.

Next, we shifted over to a nearby riverside park to relax. As we walked through the long but somewhat barren park, we got to a playground area. There was a climbing wall (which was unfortunately cordoned off) as well as some really nice playground equipment, like a long roller slide and a rope climbing tower. Always one who likes to frolic, I raced my girlfriend up and down the rope tower (she lost both times and called me a monkey), and then we took a ride down the slide. Roller slides are fast and fun, and give you a good massage on the way down too!

We got hungry, so we decided to try a Brazilian food restaurant the other JETs recommended. We had a hard time finding the place, and when we finally walked in, we were greeted by the most apathetic people I've ever met. No greeting. No showing us to our seats. No handing us menus. All we got was a stare from a gangster-looking tattooed Brazilian guy at the bar and a glance from the woman in the kitchen. It almost felt like we accidentally waltzed into their living room and they wanted us out. Anyways, we sat down where we wanted and scrounged up some menus from another table. As we were about to order, it dawned on us that we had no idea what language to order in. The menu was entirely in Portuguese, and not a single Japanese word was written anywhere in the shop. Kristin just did her best using Spanish pronunciations to order some sandwiches (that was all they really had), and sat back down. While we were eating, nobody else came in except for another gangster-looking Brazilian dude, who biked up on his expensive downhill bike and fist-bumped the other guy before joining him at the bar. We just finished as quickly as we could and left. Outside, we were baffled by what just happened, and how the hell a shop like that could survive, let alone even exist, in this place. Awkward.......


With out bellies full, we drove through a tunnel to get to another valley called Kiso Valley, home of the Kiso Post Towns. These towns are historical trade points of the Kisoji, an old trade and travel route connecting the old and new capitols, Kyoto and Tokyo. The town we went to was called Narai, which was the richest of the Kiso Post Towns back in the day. It turned out to be more boring and less authentic than I was hoping. The preservation area itself was only a single strip running through an obviously more modern town. Many of the "preserved buildings" were merely more modern buildings disguised as traditional ones. The road is paved with cement, and cars swerve through occasionally. The box style lamps hanging from the buildings seem traditional, until you realize they run on energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs. The place was pretty deserted, as it was a cold and windy day. Many of the places were closed, and the places that were open tended to be shops selling stereotypical Japanese trinkets for exorbitant prices. I will not pay $30 for a little wooden comb, thank you very much. The whole place just reeked of "tourist trap." It was such a let down that I didn't even feel obligated to take a picture of the place, so you'll have to settle for a stock photo.

Narai-juku on a warmer and busier day.

Taking a break from all the disappointment, we stopped in a small shop to eat some of the local specialty: お焼 oyaki. Oyaki is a fried, steamed, and flipped bun stuffed with different kinds of goodies. We ordered ones filled with pumpkin, 野沢菜 "nozawana" pickled greens, and しめじ "shimeji" mushrooms. They were quite good and surprisingly inexpensive, and helped to lift my mood. We took a 肉まん mean bun home with us before we left the town for good.

Different kinds of oyaki. We had the three on the left.

That night, we decided to get some pizza. I haven't had pizza since I came to Japan, so hooray! We went up to a place called Oz Pizza, which turned out to be a B&B cabin in the woods in the foothills. We ordered a pepperoni pizza, which was fresh from the wood-fired stove. It was ridiculously expensive ($35 for something equivalent to a small pizza), but it was nice to actually have some real mozzarella cheese instead of the sweet candy-like dairy product Japanese people like to call cheese.

That pretty much ended the bizarre weekend. The next day, before I got back on the bus and headed back home, we ate lunch at a local gyoza shop that Kristin had always wanted to try. It was run by a nice old lady with golden teeth, and their prices were fantastic. We both got set menus, and shared the mapo tofu and gyoza that came with them. The gyoza were tasty and stuffed to the brim, unlike the loose saggy ones with very little filling at other places. Kristin kicked herself a few times for not trying the place sooner, and we left to the bus terminal.

Goodbye Komagane, and here's hoping that we never encounter each other again!