I left the hills southeast of Nagano and then headed into the hills northwest of Nagano.  I had heard there was a ninja museum out there and decided that that might be a cool place to visit.  There was a bus that took me out to the ninja museum, so i jumped on that and headed into the hills.  It was pouring rain, so not ideal, but a little water never hurt anyone.  I arrived at the ninja museum and it was a compound of museum as well as some ninja themed kids experiances although they were still cool for me.  A lot of the interactive stuff was outside which was not ideal in the rain, but the museum and the Ninja house was inside which was cool.

The museum had a ton of artifacts and pictures of ninja stuff which was really cool, but there were very few descriptions of the history or what a lot of these artifacts mean.

after checking out the museum I headed to the ninja house which is basicaly a fun house which has a lot of secret passageways and puzzles to figure out in order to make it to the end.  It was pretty fun although I did get stuck for a little while, trying to figute out how to get out of a certain room.

There were no photos allowed in the ninja house, but there were a few very obvious doorways and a few pretty difficult ones that I struggled to figure out.  Despite the carnival feel of this house, I had a good time and was legitimately challenged to figure out how to get out.  Once i was done in the house, I wandered the grounds and tried some of the interactive ninja exhibits, such as a shaking house, bridge and a place where you could throw ninja stars at a target.

I tried the ninja star throwing and was about 50% successful which was fun but not ideal.  The rain made some of these interactive exhibits less ideal so I headed back to the road in order to check out some of the temples in the area.  The rain was not letting up, so the large ammount of hiking I had planned was not as interesting to me, so I opted to go to one temple then bus it down to the other ones instead of walking.  There was a really cool hike in the area that I had seen online but i didn’t plan ahead enough to get there early enough and the rain would have made it very dangerous.  I walked along a path lined by large amazing trees.

The temple at the end was not really that nice to be honest and probably wasn’t worth getting soaked for, although I was already pretty wet and like I said before, a little water never hurt anyone.

The rain did keep the crowds away and the forest surrounding the temple and trail was pretty nice.

The three shrines together (upper, middle and lower) make up the Togakushi shrine as a whole.

The shrines are related to an important story in Japanese mythology in which the Sun Goddess hid herself in a cave in present day Takachiho on Kyushu after her brother had misbehaved, thereby bringing darkness to the world.

In order to get the sunlight back, the other deities tried to lure the Sun Goddess out of the cave by performing spectacular dance performances in front of it. As the Sun Goddess took a peek out, one of the deities grabbed the cave’s stone door and threw it away to prevent her from hiding again. The stone door flew all the way to Togakushi in Nagano Prefecture, which is also how the area got its name: Togakushi literally means “hiding door”.

Today, the upper shrine worships the deity who grabbed and threw away the stone door, while the middle shrine enshrines the deity who organized the dance performances in front of the cave.

This area besides being famous for the shrines and ninja museum, it is also said to be the birthplace of the Soba noodle, which is a thinner noodle made of buckwheat. By the time I had explored the museum and shrines, it was pretty late and many of the restaurants were closed.  I went to the visitor center and asked them where I could still get soba noodles and they pointed me in the direction of  place that was supposed to be open just down the street.  Unfortunately they had just closed and so I asked if they knew of anywhere that was open.  They called another place and confirmed that they were still open.  They said it was down the street past the gas station and I thought I knew where that was, so i set off walking down the street.  Shortly after leaving the shop, the man came running out after me asking me if i planned on walking there.  I confirmed and he said, no no no no, I will drive you there.  So he pulled up in his van and gave me a ride down the street to the other restaurant that was open.  It was much further than anticipated so i was very thankful for his ride.  He was very nice and we had a little chat about the area and what i was doing there.  He dropped me off and waved farewell.  I sat down in the Soba place and tried to convey chef’s specialty since the menu was all in Japanese.  The older couple working the kitchen did not speak english so we got out our translating apps and eventually figured out what I was saying.  They sat down and had a nice conversation with me about Soba noodles and the area, but due to the lack of language understanding, it was a slow going conversation.  They brought out my dinner and it did not disappoint.

After eating, the bus stop was right down the street, so I said goodbye and then jumped on the bus back to Nagano.

A note about this particular bus that I thought was neat.  When you enter the bus, you get a ticket with your stop number on it.  There is then a screen at the front of the bus that increases the fare for each section as the bus drives down the road.  So if you got on at stop 1 and then headed to stop 4, you would pay the fare on the board corresponding to stop 1 on the TV.  Works a lot better to pay when you leave than to pay an upfront fair and then ride whatever distance.

Upon arriving back in Nagano I chilled in the hostel for a little bit then grabbed food efore heading to bed.

The next morning I went for a run to the temple in town that was recommended to check out.  It wasn’t that far away and so i ran by and took a look. The city itself was built around Zenkoji Temple and was built in the 7th century.

I continued my run into the streets of Nagano and got a little bit lost due to the windy streets and hills.  Having my phone with me made sure I wasn’t actually that lost, but i for sure took an interesting path on my run.  The views were pretty nice though.

After my run it was time to leave Nagano and make my way to Tokyo.  I saw that there were a few breweries along the train lines on the way to Tokyo so I decided to try and visit a few of them if possible.  The biggest issue with most of them is that they were not really that close to public transit.  I gave myself the entire day to get to Tokyo, so I figured I would end up walking a bunch.

My first brewery target was Oh No Ho! brewing which I had seen all over Japan and knew that their beer was pretty good.  I asked a few people the best way to get there and they suggested taking a smaller train to a stop at the bottom of the valley and then catching a cab to the brewery.

When I arrived at the train station, there were no cabs out front and none driving around on the streets nearby.  So i decided to walk up the hill for about an hour.  It was a little unfortunate because I had all of my stuff with me but I made it work.  I stuck out my thumb a few times to cars driving by but nobody picked me up.  Eventually, after an hour of uphill walking, I made it to the brewery just in time for Lunch!

They didn’t have a taster tray and I had a few of their beers already, so i grabbed a pint and ordered a curry!  The beer was good, the food was good and the view was good.  I had also just missed the rain as it started to pour just after i arrived.

I had another beer then had the restaurant call me a cab to take me back to the train station.  I am kind of glad I didn’t take the cab initially because it ended up costing me $40 for a not so far away ride.  This was only the second time I had used a cab in Japan and promised myself that I wouldn’t use one again.

I arrived at the train station and caught the next bullet train towards Tokyo.  You may be thinking that I said there were a few breweries on the way to Tokyo, but apparently the two other ones are larger production facilities and require reservations/do not have a tap room.  Therefore I opted to skip it and just get to Tokyo a little bit early.  While on the train, I got out my laptop and worked on the blog for a bit.  Next up is the wonderful adventures in Tokyo!