Adventures in Japan

Day Somewhere in the Teens: About Halfway Done

Today's weather was not very good at all. Grey and rainy.

Our original plan had been to go on a three hour hike. I had really been looking forward to this three hour hike. The hike started in one quaint little town, seemingly untouched by time, wandered through a picturesque valley full of greenery and flowers and the occasional waterfall, and ended up in another quaint little town.

We've seen shrines, we've seen temples, we've seen big cities and skyscrapers. What we have not seen much of, depressingly so, during our tenure here in Japan is nature. Osaka is one of the least green cities we've ever encountered.

Which has been one of the nice perks of this trip. The greenery. The scenery. Rivers and waterways where you can see all the way to the bottom because the water is clear. It has been a wonderful change. And this hike would have been a long, lovely soak in nature.

Instead it was just soaking.

If we had been prepared, we would have gone. Prepared for hiking, for getting out there into 'the nature'. If we wore waterproof all weather clothing. If we packed light.

We are far from light, we are North Americans.

No way were we going to do a three hour hike in the rain. Plus my video camera is brand new, I ain't taking it out in the rain! Nuts to that!

Instead we slept in, tried to blog (we would update more, but our own computers and spotty hotel internet access forever conspire against us), watched some Japanese TV.

The weather turned from crap to meh, so we decided to venture outside. This place has a castle, so we walked over to it.


On our way, we passed by this totally awesome statue of sword wielding frogs.



We made it to the castle and looked around. It looked like a castle, the sky looked like more rain. We went back to the hotel. In Matsumoto. Which is where we were today, in case I haven't mentioned that yet.