Chubu-Kanto – Japan Dec 2023 – APA Hotel Keisei Ueno Ekimae

The fifth and last of our blog entries observing our places of stay this 18 day trip to Japan! We stayed at the APA Hotel Keisei Ueno Ekimae for just one night, so our notes would be probably limited by

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Chubu-Kanto – Japan Dec 2023 – Tabino Hotel Lit Matsumoto

We were targeting to stay within Nagano city and close to the train station for the Nagano segment of our trip months ago early on in our planning. Unfortunately, there seemed to be relatively few hotels around the train station,

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Day 16 @ Nagano – Shiga Kogen and Kumanoyu Ski Area

Day 16! And our last full day in the Nagano prefecture, we’d booked through Klook a day visit to a highland for snow activities and to also visit that very famous snow monkey park. In a sense, this day trip

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Day 15 @ Matsumoto – Norikura Kogen Snowshoe Hike

We’re not massive snow activity persons. Nonetheless, when wintering in the country, we’d necessarily need to at least do some of it – if nothing else, just to tick off the item in the ‘must-do’ list! Unfortunately, the daughter had

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Day 14 @ Matsumoto – Winter Illumination at Matsumoto Castle

This wasn’t in our planned itinerary, but we saw an information board at our visit to Matsumoto Castle yesterday that there is a nightly winter illumination night show, and it starts from 6PM. The show repeats every 15 minutes and

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Day 13 @ Nikko – Matsumoto – Matsumoto Castle and Nawate Shopping Street

While Central Nikko itself was a pretty sedate small town, we were loathed to check out of Stay Nikko Guesthouse. Despite it not having the modern conveniences of numerous restaurants and cafes right at our door-step i.e. like at Toggle

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Chubu-Kanto – Japan Dec 2023 – Stay Nikko Guesthouse

We stayed two nights at the Stay Nikko Guesthouse, a small establishment owned by a lovely couple who look like they’re in their early 40s. I reckon most visitors to Central Nikko during winter won’t stay overnight unless they are

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