Matsumoto Day One

For the past three morning I've been heading to Starbucks to do some grading. Slowly I'm catching up with the stack of tests I have. Contrary to popular belief, I do have a job and I'm back at it now that the measles scare has passed. Although having the week off was great, the extra week I now have to teach isn't. With some juggling of my schedule, I should be able to meet my sister at the airport and be free for the first week that she is here. Thankfully, our schedules are conducive to such changes. I'm glad I took full advantage of the week, however. The Kanto region is a beautiful part of Japan that just begs to be explored. I find the longer I live in Japan the more my interest in it's history and geography grows. No matter where I live, Japan will alway feature prominently in my life. When my time comes to leave it, I want to have every possibility exhausted. I want to see and experience everything I can here - I encourage everyone to do the same, whether you're living in the city of your birth or a city as foreign as Tokyo, there is always something new to be discovered. Find out what it is and do it.

As I mentioned before when I found out I had a week off I pulled out my Lonely Planet Japan and started reading. I was particulary interested in possibly visiting Yokohama, Okutama, Mitake, Matsumoto and/or Niijima during my week off. After knocking Niijima off the list (I'm going this summer with Jen and Aaron instead), my friend Karen and I decided to check out Matsumoto, a castle town in Nagano Prefecture, a closer, more easily organized choice then Niijima (a ten hour ferry ride away). After very little delay, we booked ourselves a room and found out the train times. We were off the next morning at 7:30.

Matsumoto is a charming city. It's main attraction, besides it's open relaxed feel, is its castle, Matsumoto-jo. (Jo means castle in Japanese). Karen and I were lucky enough to be approached by a volunteer guide, a genki ojiisan, who spoke English quite well. It was great having someone to explain the history of the castle, information we would not have been able to discover on our own, given our limited ability to read Japanese. How I yearn to one day wake up and be fluent. Our guide, whose name escapes me, spent about two hours with us. A superb start to the trip.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around the city. By late afternoon we were ready to head to our hotel. After phoning the owner we jumped on the bus for what we thought would be a short ride to our destination - turned out we acted too hastily and after a nice bus tour of Matsumoto ended up back at the bus station. We realized our mistake shortly after my astute observation, "I didn't think Matsumoto was such a big city," to which Karen replied "I think we've seen this before..." Two minutes later we were climbing off the bus confused. Attempt number two brought us a few stops from the hotel but we still had to phone the owner for additional directions; somehow we had missed the bus stop. The owner was kind enough to come and pick us up. I'm still not sure how we managed to get so turned around.

Stay tuned for day two.