The city of Matsumoto lies on a plain, pretty much surrounded by mountains. With good rail service, we parked ourselves at a nice hotel near the station for six days so were able to explore the town and take easy day trips, one of which I briefly mentioned in my previous post.
With a population of only about 250,000, Matsumoto is not a big town but it is known for a couple of things.
It has one of Japan’s great castles. We were pleased to find that local volunteers provide free tours so we learned a lot about its history.
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| I got busted by security but talked my way out! |
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| With Hiro, our 84 year old guide |
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| View from the top |
The artist, Yayoi Kusama is from here and the local art museum has a large exhibit devoted to her works. We saw an installation of hers at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa, Spain several years ago and were blown away. By the way - she’s 97 and still working!
One day, Judy and I ventured to nearby Narai-juku, a famous town on Nakasendo which was one of the five roads connecting Kyoto with Edo (modern day Tokyo) centuries ago. I loved the local lacquerware and admired the trays every restaurant used so we visited a craftsman’s shop and picked up a couple.
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| A bit of the old road |
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| My Google Translate camera told me this was a soba shop |
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| Our noodles, served on lacquerware trays |
On another time, we took trains to Suwa and Nagano. The first was a small town on a legendary lake of the same name.
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| Suwa Lakeside Park |
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| Lakeside foot bath, ahhhh! |
Nagano's claim to fame is that it hosted the 1998 Winter Olympic games. We were getting tired at that point so didn’t linger.
My best memories of Matsumoto? There were virtually no tourists. Also, the hotel had an onsen (public bath) so I was able to learn about - and savor this important aspect of Japanese culture. Lastly, we got to meet Miyo, the Japanese-Korean owner of a Korean restaurant we stumbled into one night. Since her lifelong partner passed away a few years ago, she has operated this place by herself, greeting guests, cooking, waiting tables and cleaning everything up at the end of the night. All at the age of 63! She and Judy really connected and we had lots of chats using Google translate. After our last meal there, through hugs and tears she asked us to please come back one day. We’ll see…
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