Japan 2012: Kagoshima > Shin-Yatsushiro > Hitoyoshi > Yoshimatsu > Kagoshima

Thursday, 8 November 2012

At least three times during the night I lay half asleep trying to figure out what that noise was. It certainly sounded like rain, a possibility I dismissed as absurd first time around, but when it reappeared, with the sound of some sort of emergency vehicle passing by, siren engaged, I considered the possibility a little further.

We're on the thirteenth floor (out of fourteen) and on a corner of a rectangular building, so perhaps rain, driven by a strong wind might account for it. Trouble was, there was no sound of wind.

On the third, or possibly fourth or fifth occasion the penny dropped. It was the air conditioner.

On other days with walking around as a significant part of the agenda, but given the morning's schedule, a rail based loop through southern Kyushu that was going to involve some pretty smart movement given an interval of three minutes between trains at the last changeover, rain wasn't likely to be too much of an issue.

Of course, we needed to get to the station, but with two nights in the same location the Little Red Travelling Bag would be safe and sound in the Sunn Days Inn, Kagoshima.

The loop should bring us back into Kagoshima around a quarter to one, giving us the afternoon and most of the following morning to take a look around the city that has been tagged the Naples of the Eastern world.

A prime bayside location, an impressive stratovolcano (Sakurajima, Kagoshima's equivalent of Vesuvius) and a mild climate that’s largely related to a position as Kyushu's southernmost major city combine to deliver that moniker. It’s the capital of the local prefecture and its largest city by a fair distance.

Right on the southern tip of Kyushu, Kagoshima Prefecture stretches around six hundred kilometres, as far as the boundary with the neighbouring Okinawa Prefecture in the Ryūkyū Islands and includes Yakushima Island, a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site, the twelve Tokara Islands and Amamioshima, the second largest isolated island in Japan.

Dating back to the fourteenth century. Kagoshima sits on the northeastern Satsuma peninsula, facing Kagoshima Bay (also known as Kinko Bay). As the political and commercial centre of territory controlled by the Shimazu clan of samurai through medieval times and into the Edo period (1603–1867) when it became the capital of the Satsuma Domain.

Satsuma was one of the wealthiest and most powerful fiefdoms, and though international trade was banned for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the city remained prosperous. It also served as the political centre for the semi-independent vassal kingdom of Ryūkyū, whose traders and emissaries frequented the city. Kagoshima had also been a significant centre of Christian activity before the religion was banned in the late sixteenth century.


The Royal Navy bombarded Kagoshima in 1863 after the daimyō of Satsuma refused to pay an indemnity to compensate for the murder of Charles Lennox Richardson on the Tōkaidō highway the previous year and the city was the birthplace and last stand of Saigō Takamori at the end of the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877. More significantly in the long term, nineteen young men from Satsuma broke the Tokugawa Shogun’s ban on foreign travel, travelling to England and the United States to study Western science and technology, an adventure that did much to kickstart Japan's industrial revolution. There’s a statue outside the train station paying tribute to them.

Kagoshima was also the birthplace of Tōgō Heihachirō whose role as Chief Admiral of the Grand Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Russo-Japanese War produced startling victories in 1904 and 1905, destroying Russian naval power in the East, and contributing to the failed 1905 revolution in Russia.

The city’s status as a significant naval base and position as a railway terminus saw a mass bombing raid on the night of 17 June 1945 that deposited over eight hundred tons of incendiary and cluster bombs destroying over forty per cent of the built-up area. Today, Kagoshima produces a wealth of agricultural and marine produce, is home to sophisticated electronic technologies and is the only prefecture with a rocket launching facility, which assembles the cream of modern science. In March 2004, the city became the southern end of the Shinkansen bullet train network, with services terminating at Kagoshima-Chuō.

Recent upgrades mean Kagoshima is now eighty minutes from Fukuoka (Hakata if you want to split hairs). It’s around two and a quarter hours to Hiroshima, just under three and a half to Okayama, just over four to Osaka in the heartland of the Kansai Region and between seven and eight hours to Tokyo depending on the particular service you choose to use. That involves a combination of the Tokaido, San'yo and Kyushu Shinkansen lines so there are a variety of permutations and combinations. There doesn’t seem to be a single service that runs straight through.

The day's travel proceedings involved, in Madam's words, a big train day, though given our location at the very end of the Shinkansen network you might question how that was possible. The answer to your question, of course, involved local lines, and while I knew this was the case there was nothing in the lead up to departure to suggest there was anything much out of the ordinary.

Now, had I been a bit more thorough in my pre-trip research I might have known I was in for something special once we'd partially retraced our steps on the Shinkansen network and alighted at Shin-Yatsushiro, but even Madam, who'd planned the day's route and only had us doing this bit because it would deliver us to Hitoyoshi was gobsmacked by what came next.

It wasn't, by all admissions, the most promising of starts. Once we'd alighted at Shin-Yatsushiro and made our way from the Shinkansen section to the much more prosaic surroundings of the local line the first train that appeared was a local stopping at all stations conveyance that was as run down as you might suspect under the circumstances.

We weren't quite in the back blocks, being on the main Shinkansen line, but if you were bound for the boondocks this was the train that would get you there.

And it certainly looked the part.

When our train, the rather splendidly named Trans-Kyushu Express, arrived it was only a cut or two above its predecessor, but once we'd looped back under the Shinkansen line and headed up into the hills you weren't inclined to pay too much attention to your surroundings since your gaze is automatically drawn to the passing landscape, forest-covered ranges with almost vertical slopes that towered above the train as it wound it's way along a river valley.

It wasn't quite as spectacular as the ride between Toyama and Takayama and back down to Nagoya or the run from Nagano down to Nagoya, but those are well known scenic routes. This one, a mere transitory stage before what was to come was, however, bloody magnificent.


We pulled into Hitoyoshi after an hour to find the next train waiting for us.

Now, you don't take a heritage train and give it a full restoration and then run it through a setting that won't attract a clientele, and this section of track, as was the case with the next one, was obviously being niche marketed as a trip for train freaks.

If the prelude was bloody magnificent, these next two stages were absolutely stunning. Given the niche marketing bit, there were stops guaranteed to maximize that appeal, the first at a heritage station that came just before a switchback and a loop up into the mountains and a stop some five or six minutes later that had you looking back at the station you'd just visited.

I stayed on board for that one, but The Photographer, as you'd expect didn't. Her report, once back on board, had Hughesy alighting at every subsequent stop.

There was one at a place whose name translates as Eternal Happiness, where you struck a bell according to you relative deep grebe of absolute contentment. One for merely happy, two for very happy, three for verging on the ecstatic.

Another was the oldest station in Kyushu, though how that worked when you're in the uplands in the centre of the island didn't quite compute.

There was a stop at Yatake station, which dates back to 1909, where an impressive locomotive was stabled in a largish shed beside a stall selling fresh merchandise (Madam invested in some freshly dried mushrooms). In front of the locomotive the train's hostess was holding a train-driver's cap and a board bearing the date, a handy combo for photographic purposes, and offering to take the photo for you.

There was af air bit of that sort of silliness along the way and it was difficult to abstain from involvement.

On a more serious note, since the track was following the route that brought the first trains to Kagoshima, there had obviously been a fair bit of logging and land clearing along the route, and in the most recently cleared areas there seemed to be a significant spread of invasive vines and creepers and other weeds that made the foreground, on frequent occasions along the journey, an eyesore.

Whether the forests will eventually overrun the invaders is, of course, one of those only time will tell scenarios. When the weeds took over the foreground, of course, the natural response was to lift up the eyes to the magnificent backdrop.


The first stage took us from 10:08 to 11:21, and where I'd been expecting some degree of difficulty when we pulled into the station at Yoshimatsu  it was obvious the next train wouldn't be going anywhere until the connection had been made.

The next stage, from 11:24 to 12:48 was on a similarly restored rail motor, though the interior decor was, as you'd expect, slightly different and there were a couple of stops at seemingly out of the way onsens to pick up passengers.

Eventually, of course, we found ourselves approaching Kagoshima, and the interest shifted over the water to Sakurajima, the volcano that is to Kagoshima what Vesuvius is to Naples. Conditions throughout the day had been hazy, and the view across the water wasn't the greatest, but the sight had Madam and other camera enthusiasts snapping away with Hughesy happy to leave the snapping to those who had affair idea of what they were doing.

Back at Kagoshima-chuo I was satisfied with the day's activities, and would have been quite happy to have headed back to the hotel, but Madam was determined to get a couple of scenic shots across the bay to Sakurajima, so we headed off on one of the two bus services that offer a scenic loop around the city.

I suppose we could, had the mood taken us, have got on and off at several of the sites around the circuit, the first of which commemorated St Francis Xavier, but there wasn't much of interest on the way around once we'd dismissed Senganen Garden (also known as Isoteien) as a possibility.

We’d passed this particular landscape garden as a possibility when we passed it on the train as we headed along the coast just north of Kagoshima. We were probably doing ourselves out of a major spectacle since the garden’s most striking feature is its use of Sakurajima and Kagoshima Bay as borrowed scenery, but by this point on the trip we were in scenic sensory overload.

In any case, if you’re passing, it’s worth noting that Senganen dates back to1658 and owes its existence to the Shimazu clan, who ruled the Satsuma domain until the end of the feudal age and were early adopters of Western science and technology, as evidenced by the long stone building that stands just outside the main garden area. It was one of the earliest Western style factories in the country and now houses a museum with exhibits about the Shimizu and the early stages of Japan's nineteenth century modernization.

No, as far as Madam was concerned Shiroyama Observatory at the summit of the 107-metre Mount Shiroyama would do us very nicely, thank you. The mountain was once the site of a castle and Shiroyama literally means castle mountain. The castle's ruins at the base of the mountain are now the site of the Reimeikan Museum and were one of the stops we skipped on the way up to the Observatory.

Shiroyama Observatory is (probably rightly) famed for spectacular views across downtown Kagoshima, Kagoshima Bay and Sakurajima and, in fine weather with good visibility, as far as the Kirishima Mountains, but the haze that had been a nuisance in the distance all day really made its presence felt even at this moderately low altitude, and there wasn't a great deal of joy for the photographic fraternity.

The park surrounding the Observatory is also of interest to students of Japanese history, since it was the site of the last battle in 1877's Satsuma Rebellion and local hero Saigo Takamori supposedly made his last stand at Saigo's Cave, another site we passed by on the way up.

A couple of bus services take you around the sights of Kagoshima, so we could have got to a number of them, but opted to head back to the hotel. This travel bit can tend to become wearing.

Dinner that night was in a French establishment on the other side of the main road from the previous night’s pork emporium, and rather impressive it was. That’ll have to do as far as the narrative is concerned because Hughesy, for some reason, missed completing this particular bit of the travelogue in a timely manner, and now, close to a month later the details have vanished from the memory.

Japan 2012: Nagano > Nagoya > Okayama

With the travelogue backlog mostly caught up, thanks to a couple of hours on the local train the day before and a two hour stint in the morning it was time to turn the attention to the day's proceedings, which were rather straightforward.

We'd take a walk around the city in the morning, returning to the hotel to collect the Black Monster and heading to the station for a connection to Nagoya and thence to Okayama, where we had an evening appointment with some combination of ramen noodles and tapas, though probably not in the same sitting.

Best known as the venue for the 1998 Winter Olympics, Nagano sits surrounded by 3000-metre summits, and a morning glance through the hotel window revealed snow capped peaks at a comfortable remove from the immediate vicinity. The Prefecture, of which Nagano is the capital, is known as the Roof of Japan and since it lies between the Kanto and Kansai regions, local customs have been influenced by the cultures of both eastern and western Japan. As the regional capital, Nagano serves as the transport hub for the surrounding snow resorts, with handy road and rail links to most of Japan's major centers, including Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto and Osaka. It's about an hour and a half from Tokyo by Shinkansen on the Hokuriku Line, also known as the Nagano Shinkansen or Asama, a legacy of the 1998 Winter Olympics with two or three departures per hour from Tokyo Station.

There is, however, a more scenic approach via the Wide View Shinano limited express that runs hourly from Nagoya, a three hour journey that takes you up (or in our case since we headed in the opposite direction, down) through the central cordillera and provides a route that's almost as scenic as the rail motor line from Toyama to Nagoya that passes through Takayama.

That one was one of the highlights of our 2008 trip, and if it subsequently seems I'm a little under-enthused about this leg of the journey it's coming on the end of a trip through Tohoku that has delivered multiple highlights of the autumn leaves variety. But if you're heading to Nagano from anywhere in western Japan, and Kyoto or Osaka in particular it's the best option, with one important caveat that comes into effect a little further down the page.

The Shinano is notorious for running late and had us scurrying to get to the right platform when we arrived in Nagoya. If you're headed into Nagano and planning to spend the night there, of course, difficulty making connections won't be an issue.

Originally a small town built around the hilltop 7th century Buddhist temple, the largest wooden building in eastern Japan, Nagano attracts a million tourists every year, drawn to the snow resorts, golf courses, a variety of sights and the natural hot springs found throughout the mountain areas. Nagano is also noted for a variety of culinary products including soba noodles, apples and sake, oyaki dumplings, gohei mochi snacks, and bamboo leaf-wrapped sasa-zushi.

Founded in the seventh century, Zenkoji is one of the most popular temples in Japan, and while it sees a stream of visitors the most significant feature of the temple is only shown to the public for a couple of weeks every six years. Zenkoji houses the first Buddhist statue brought into Japan when Buddhism was first arrived in the sixth century. The original hibutsu (hidden Buddha) is permanently hidden and what will be on display again in 2015 is a replica.

You approach Zenkoji (or at least we did) along a street lined with shops that sell local specialties and souvenirs, through a couple of gates along the way. The outer Niomon Gate is guarded by a pair of impressive Deva guardians, which protect the temple from enemies of Buddhism, while the Sanmon Gate, which dates back to 1750, offers vies of the temple approaches from the second storey.

Zenkoji's main hall, rebuilt in 1707, contains various statues, and if you pay the fee it’s possible to enter the inner chamber, view the main altar, and enter the basement where a pitch dark underground passage holds the key to paradise, attached to a wall, believed to grant salvation to those who touch it.

Had I consulted my research notes before we set out I would have visited Yawataya Isogoro, just outside Zenkoji's main gate. A 280-year-old store specializing in shichimi (seven flavours), a condiment consisting of ground chili peppers, sesame, citrus, and other spices, commonly sprinkled on soba noodle soup, but I didn't so Hughesy's Chilli ingredient collection is one condiment poorer.

Predictably, the main item on the day's agenda before the long rail leg that would deliver us to Okayama was a visit to the Zenkoji temple, an exercise that took us on an extended ramble past last night's dinner venue and on to the road street that runs uphill to the temple. It was a fair step from the hotel but I was up for the exercise and once we'd done the temple bit there was the prospect of oyaki dumplings for brunch.

With the temple visit out of the way, and a couple of oyaki dumplings consumed (I'd opted for a mushroom filling at the first place we tried, and mushroom with radish at the second) we diverted in search of croquettes to round off the brunch and waved our way back to the hotel through the back streets rather than retracing the route we'd followed on the outward journey.

Having reclaimed the Black Monster it was Ho! for the station and the Shinano Express. Since we were boarding at the point of departure there was a ten minute window before we started moving, time that I used to keep working on travelogue material, an activity that brought a fairly sharp rebuke from The Supervisor because we were in for a major scenic delight.

As a result, the iPad was slotted into the backpack and the iPod provided the soundtrack as we set off on what was, indeed, a scenic joy to behold. At first, running through Nagano Prefecture it was a case of fairly broad plains filled with the regular signs of economic and agricultural activity backed on both sides by majestic snowcapped mountains. Then, as the train climbed into the foothills things closed in on either side as we travelled through deep forest-clad gorges where rocky riverbeds were the order of the day and slopes that were closer to the vertical than the horizontal showed an impressive array of autumn leaves.


There was, however, one major issue that means this particular leg of the trip is significantly underrepresented in the photographic record. We were elated on the left hand side of a service that departed at midday on a line where the westerns sun seemed to remain in a steady position providing a continuing source of annoyance and preventing anything in the way of photographic action. Things got so bad towards the end of the journey that we were forced to draw the curtains.

Fortunately, the views on the other side were quite magnificent and the glare issues completely ruled out anything resembling typing, so there was nothing for it but to sit back and enjoy about two and a half hours of magnificent scenery. The last bit, heading across the plain into Nagoya, was the predictable cityscape, and much of the time we spent crossing it was spent pondering the possible outcomes when a train is six minutes late and your connection leaves ten minutes after the scheduled arrival in Nagoya.

An announcement over the P.A. System advised us to speak to the conductor, which, of course, we duly did, but one couldn't help suspecting the normally reliable and on time almost to the second Shinkansen service was going to be kept waiting to allow a couple of stragglers to make the connection. The Shinano is a regular train, rather than a Shinkansen, which meant that, once we'd alighted and found our way off the platform we had to find our way onto the relevant platform in the Shinkansen section, something that had both of moving at a fair clip down an escalator, along a passageway and up another escalator to find...

Miracle of miracles, a Shinkansen just coming to a halt, easing into the station just in time for us to board. The train we'd boarded was actually going to our overnight stop at Okayama, but we changed in Osaka, boarding a much more luxurious Sakura that would get us there quicker than the train we'd just left, which was one of the stop at all stations variety.

The reasons for stopping where you do vary, and we were in Okayama because of its location, which makes the city an important transportation hub. It’s the spot where the main Shinkansen line joins the only rail connection to Shikoku, which we were going to be visiting briefly the following day, crossing the Seto-oteshi Bridge. Had that detail not been part of the equation we could well have continued on to Hiroshima.

Okayama's most famous attraction is Korakuen Garden, which is ranked as one of the best traditional landscape gardens in Japan, along with Kanazawa's Kenrokuen and Mito's Kairakuen. The black Okayama Castle, located just across from the garden, is another attraction, but the single item that dominates the city’s cultural environment is a fairy tale.

Momotaro delivered, I must admit, a certain degree of wry amusement, due to the coincidence of mythical hero and a culinary delicacy of which I’m not too enamoured. In the fairy tale, an elderly childless couple find a peach floating down a river, and, when they investigate further they find it contains a baby boy. As is invariably the case in such instances, the couple adopt the child, and given the circumstances in which he was found, name him Momotaro (literally, Peach Boy). The fully grown Peach Boy, announcing his determination to rid the neighbourhood of the demons from Onigashima (Demon Island), who’ve been terrorising the villagers.

He’ll need something to fuel his quest, so his aged adoptive mother makes kibi-dango (sweet millet-flour dumplings) to take on the journey. He’ll also need allies, which he finds in the form of a dog, a monkey, and a pheasant who he enlists to the cause by bribing them with the kibi-dango.

Predictably, the demons are defeated, their treasure makes the old couple rich and everyone lived happily ever after. Okayama’s main street, predictably, is Momotarō-Odōri, or Peach Bo Street.

I’m thinking of writing my own version of the story, detailing the adventures of Frock-Stah, the rum ball boy.

The plain on which the city is located produces rice, eggplant, and white Chinese chives while the uplands behind the city produce grapes and (surprise, surprise) white peaches. Proximity to the Seto Inland Sea contributes to several of the area’s signature dishes, including the popular takeaway matsuri-zushi (sushi rice with vinegar, egg and seafood), sold in a peach-shaped box. Other specialties include mamakari, which resemble herring and sawara, a fish whose name is rendered into English as trout or horse mackerel.

And, of course, there’s always kibi-dango.

Which explains why we ended up at a Spanish tapas place that adjoined the hotel...

Japan 2012: Unazuki Spring > Nagano

Saturday, 3 November 2012

The hot spring onsen experience might be one of the major draw cards to the area, but there's no doubt that most of the visitors are there, at least partly, to ride the rather wonderful little railway that runs out of Unazuki Springs.

Operating from mid-April to November every year, the Kurobe Torokko Electric Railway was originally used to carry workers to the construction sites for the hydroelectric dams in the Gorge. It’s just over twenty kilometres from Unazuki to the terminus at Keyakidaira and the trip takes around eighty minutes each way.

Along the way the railway passes through the steepest V-shaped gorge in Japan, crossing twenty-one bridges and snaking through forty-one tunnels, passing a number of hot springs, including Kuronagi and Kanetsuri, and around the terminus at Keyakidaira there are a number of scenic options including the Sarutobi Ravine and the Man-eating Rock and Meiken Hot Spring.

That, however, is getting ahead of the developing narrative.

We'd bunked down rather early the night before, with Hughesy claiming major fatigue as a major contributory factor to Friday morning's condition, and I was definitely a candidate for a big night on the futon and under the doona. I reckon there was a good eleven hours between when I drifted off and when I emerged from a deep and restful slumber, though I wasn't looking forward to what I was likely to find when daylight arrived.

This, I'd been warned, was the day when the entire array of warm clothing would be called into play, since the absolute best scenario involved a maximum of around 10 at Unazuki some time in the early afternoon and a temperature that would probably be in the low positive range when we hit the train and made our way up into the mountains.

Breakfast was another take on the Viking, though it featured almost nothing recognizable to the Western eye apart from the pastry and coffee options, but I managed a hearty enough start that fueled the day's activities and got me to dinner time without the need for further nutrition.

Breakfast done, it was a case of dropping the Black Monster and Madam's back pack at Reception, checking out and making our way a mere couple of hundred metres along the street to the headquarters of the Kurobe Torokko. The sight of a couple of traffic wardens waving batons and directing private vehicles and tour buses into their respective parking areas was enough to confirm that we were going to be dealing with significant numbers of fellow travellers.

We were booked on the second train for the morning, departing at 8:18, and the crowd for the 7:57 were queued up behind the barriers as we arrived. There's an interesting little variation on the booking side of things on the Torokko, in that your reservation gets you a seat in the carriage, but as far as which seat is concerned, it's a case of first in, best dressed.

They open the barriers about ten minutes before the scheduled departure time, and what follows isn't quite a stampede, but by the same token it isn't the casual stroll you'd be taking if you knew you had a pair of guaranteed seats either.

The actual journey starts with a climb through the first of many tunnels, emerging just before the 166-metre long Shin-Yamabiko Iron Bridge, the longest bridge on the route, and the red painted structure they use for the publicity material, then passes the Unazuki Dam, the first of the structures that brought the line into existence.

As you proceed from there there's a rather impressive castle-like structure that presumably  fulfils some purpose related to generating electricity, though just what that purpose might be remains a mystery to this particular observer. The rest of the structures en route are predictably utilitarian.

Apart from the autumn leaves, which were the main reason for the crowds being there, and quite magnificent they were, as the images hereabouts illustrate, there are plenty of items of interest to catch the keen observer's eye. There are branches running off the main line, for example, and a long subterranean tunnel built to allow workers to get back down the mountain when winter snows remove the train from the transport equation.

Suspension bridges across the gorge at a couple of points allow workers and, presumably, trekkers, to cross from side to side, though one of them doesn't.'t have hand rails. That one's for the monkeys.

High above the lot, snowcapped mountains tower over proceedings, rather uncomfortably close in appearance (Hughesy prefers his snow clad peaks in photographs, not clearly visible through the windows on a day where the temperature's hovering unpleasantly close to zero), with its beautiful emerald green surface.

The mountains climb higher after you cross the Moriishi Bridge and the train passes a couple of isolated onsen establishments on its way to the terminus at Keyakidaira, where there are a couple ofvwalking tracks that allow you to get up close and personal with the coloured leaves.

Given the threat of rain, and the temperature, I wasn't the most enthusiastic participant in the up hill and down dale ramble that took us to the lower observation platform, and,in any case, my eyes weren't holding up that well faced with a continuous display of coloured leaves. sure, they're a magnificent sight, but after a couple of hours they threaten to become overwhelming.

Still, the walk gave me the chance to see one of the stranger sights I've come across in a country where there's plenty to baffle and bemuse a Western observer. I rounded a corner to find a Japanese father doing up an eight-year-old's shoe laces. Well, maybe the kid wasn't quite eight, but he definitely looked old enough to be able to accomplish that everyday task without parental assistance. The incredible bit was that, while the concerned parent was getting those laces under order (we don't want anyone tripping now, do we?) the kid was nonchalantly playing a computer game.

I'd passed the camera to The Supervisor on the grounds that I didn't think I'd be needing it, which was just as well, since I suspect an attempt to snap the scene I found before me would more than likely have produced an ugly incident.

As we made our way back to the station, construction work produced a navigational mistake on Madam's part that took us down to a platform just above the river bed where there were more coloured leaves to see and a thermal foot bath for tired feet. I wasn't in the market for a foot bath, and wasn't looking forward to the climb back up to the station, so I wasn't impressed at all by the situation.

The definitely not gruntled but not quite disgruntled factor continued as we made our way across the bridge, headed towards the Man Eating Rock, largely due to the fact that the trail meandered along for what looked like several kilometres, the weather continued to threaten precipitation, and the back pack was a bit of a load to carry. The key point was that there wasn't an obvious turn back point on the map, and I dreaded the prospect of let's just see what's around this corner.

I knew, more or less, what was around the corner, and was sure there was a similar view around the next, the one after that and the one after that. all quite magnificent spectacles, but I was more or less spectacled out.

In any case I would have liked to see whether we could switch to an earlier train for the descent, since the switch to the night's accommodation in Nagano involved a couple of rather tight moves between connecting trains. As it turned out we'd just missed one that may or may not have had room, the next was a workers' train, and we had no option but to stick with the original plan, which gave us six minutes to alight in Unazuki, collect the luggage, make it to the station up one flight of steps and down another onto the platform, negotiating the purchase of tickets along the way.

Had it been a JR line, the ticket purchase on a local line would be unnecessary. Wave the rail pass and you're fine.

In any case, after a rest and a refreshing drink the descent was just as spectacular as the ascent, we managed to be first into the carriage, which got us a premium position for alighting at the other end, the bloke manning Reception at the hotel produced our bags as soon as he sighted us and we made it to the ticket office at the station just as the train was about to depart.

A couple of substitute tickets from a friendly conductor upstairs, a mad scramble down the stairs and we just (literally) made it as the train door closed. There was another train we could have caught half an hour later, but that would have produced the mad scramble at the other end as we transferred ourselves from the Toyama Regional Railways line to the JR one.

Actually, as it turned out, we sighted the later service while we were waiting on the platform at Ouzu, and our Hayate service was, as things turned out, running late.

Once we'd boarded the Hayate there was a comfortable stretch retracing part of the previous day's route, followed by a switch to a local service that delivered us into Nagano just after six. There was some slight confusion about the location of the hotel, which seemed to have changed names recently, but nothing major and by seven we were booked in and back downstairs scoping out the eating options.

Given the number of options in the immediate area and the lack of any commitments, deciding on a particular eatery wasn't as easy as it might sound. In most other places along the way there was either an obvious choice, or some other factor that made things a done deal, but here we had a number of possible options, and it was down to what we felt like.

Madam had flashed through a couple of options on the iPad before we left, and we'd  decided the preferred option was a Japanese-Italian drinking place (drinks with plates of nibbles), noting a number of other possibilities as a fall back.

Complications set in when we found another couple of options just down the road from the hotel, a meat on skewers barbecue place and a relatively pricey French restaurant, but we pressed on, locating the preferred option only to discover it was full except for a couple of places at the bar, which might have suited someone else, but didn't appeal to us.

Across the road there was a Vietnamese place, where the menu in Japanese and mutual unfamiliarity with the ins and outs of the cuisine meant we weren't sure about that one's, so we were off in search of others.  Recognized another fusion place from Madam's iPad info we were about to head inside when Madam noticed the Closed - Private Function sign and we ended up in another fusion place that was, as far as She could make out, a young people's drinks and nibbles hangout.

If that was the case, I found the all-Beatles soundtrack bemusing, to say the least.

What followed was a succession of little platters - Vietnamese style salmon and prawn spring rolls, a pasta marinara, char sieu pork finished off at the table with a blowtorch were three of them - that added up to a substantial meal and went down rather well with a couple of Suntory Premium Lagers.

From there we meandered back to the hotel, not quite replete, but definitely in a neighbouring post code, and for Hughesy, at least, it was a matter of another early night, followed by an early morning catching up on the Travelogue.