Category: Traveling

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,

So many people have already made this trip to see the snow monkeys at Jigokudani Monkey Park that it’s hard to really add much further value in any blog post about our visit. But perhaps I’ll angle my post here

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

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 on the ‘must-do’ list! Unfortunately, the daughter had

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

Day 14 today was originally planned for our snowshoe hike trip. But the guide we engaged alerted us a few days ago that snowfall in the area was lower than expected this week, so the missus asked if he could

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

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

The performances at Nikko Edo Wonderland are only offered in Japanese. Judging from the audience’s reactions, they were probably very entertaining. Of the four we saw, we all agreed the Ninja Theater (Ninja Action Show) was the best: it simply

One of the main reasons why we opted for two nights in Nikko was to visit Nikko Edomura, or Nikko Edo Wonderland — a theme park and living museum that showcases life and culture during the Edo period. The park,

We left the Tamozawa Imperial Villa at close to 2PM and slowly made our way to the Toshogu Shrine area. Our host at Stay Nikko Guesthouse had earlier advised that we should take the bus to get to the Villa,