The Matsumoto Saga pt. 1

After a very long flight (~24 hours of travel time) Sam and I landed in Japan. It was a surreal experience. We landed around 17:00 and the sunset from the plane was the most wonderful one I've ever seen in my life. We touched down in Nagoya and swiftly made our way through customs and etc. We ran into a very helpful woman who, upon realizing we really had no idea how to navigate the train system (with an expression of virtual horror for us), proceeded to give us the names of the places and trains we need to take to get where we wanted to go. We purchased the needed tickets and made it to our train right before the doors closed. It was pretty exciting; especially because we weren’t 100% sure it was the right one until almost the end of the ride.
At the end of about 30 minutes we found ourselves in the Nagano Train station. In all honesty, it was very intimidating. Not only were there hundreds of Japanese people running around, but we were completely lost. Just for the record, I speak no Japanese. However, due to the size of Nagoya many people spoke enough English to get their point across. After about a twenty minutes of aimless wandering, we found the ticket booth place that was not automated (because we looked at those ones…yeah all in Japanese and only had the rail numbers…no way to know what it was telling us). After waiting in line for a while Sam and I finally got to the counter. The man there was really nice, which seems to be a trend, he helped us figure out which tickets we needed to buy. We accomplished this rather rapidly, however there was a catch. The guy looked at his watch and then at us, it suddenly became rather apparent that there was a large problem. There weren’t any more trains to Matsumoto that night. We went ahead and bought tickets for the next morning.
A wee bit lost and dazed, Sam and I made our way outside. We set up against a wall. I’m sure we were quite the sight; two Gaijin sitting against a wall outside of the train station with enough luggage to hide three bodies in, looking moderately crazed and hungry. I was perfectly content to sit against the wall and sleep in shifts, but after two hours, Sam decided it would be best to alter our plans a bit, you know by adding a hotel room into the mix or something…
To shorten things a bit, Sam and I got a hotel room and dropped our stuff off, allowing us to explore the city and such, which we did. Later than night, we returned to the hotel and fell into a fitful quasi-slumber. We woke up at about four and messed around until it was time for our train to come. We made our way to the station and away we went. It wasn’t too hard to figure things out. The trick is looking at numbers and matching Kanji. If it looks like what your ticket says, do it.
After a wonderfully scenic two hour train ride, we found ourselves in Matsumoto. This would be the train station and view surrounding it at about 9:00 when we arrived.

Lovely isn't it?

Anyway, Sam and I soon found ourselves meeting up with Daniel, an Oklahoma native who’s now teaching English at a high school near Matsumoto. He’s been a huge help in getting us to our hotel and showing us around the city a bit. He actually took us to a nice little restaurant that was way more food than I could eat for a grand total of 500 ¥ which is the equivalent to about $5.20. Mind you, here, that is fairly cheap. Most places give you half the food for the same cost.
Eventually Daniel had to bolt, so Sam and I opted to explore the town a bit. It is a beautiful city. It’s absolutely stunning. I’m sad I haven’t gotten too many shots of it yet, but I’m sure there will be more.

Sam and I are staying in Smile Hotel. I get a kick out of the name, though it really does live up to it. The workers here don't seem to stop smiling, but it could be becuase they're humoring the poor gaijin who can't speak Nihongo yet. Below are a few shots of the hotel and Daniel, so you get to see a bit more of it.

Those first two images are of Sam and me triumphantly displaying our first ever purchase in the JASCO mall/store/thing. It would be our feast. Yes, the feast of kings. (i.e. Bananas, bread, and some juice.)

Anyway, to end this blog swifty, because it has already become the evolved form of an uber post, indeed the SUPER UBER POST (note: SUPER UBER POST must always be written in CAPS or it ceases to be a SUPER UBER POST and thusly reducing its awesome and potentially destroying the universe) will be to share photos of the park near our hotel, Agata no mori.

This is merely the entrance. The park is astounding. It has a playground, a walkway over a small pond with Koi and crazy awesome pidgeons...

Thus ends my SUPER UBER POST. I hope you all enjoyed it and will be sticking with me throughout my sporadic posts and such.