Snow Country for (not so) Old Men (& Women)

The Journey by express train to Matsumoto became progressively more rural and back country like. We passed forests and crossed rivers as we headed into a more central part of Japan. Arriving at Matsumoto (the home town of the Suzuki of Suzuki music method fame and also home to quite a lively European classical music scene) we followed what is now a bit of a routine by going to the tourist info desk and asking for a list of cheap business hotels. Matsumoto had a Toyoko-Inn, our second.  Other smallish cities / towns we have visited I found Matsumoto very pleasant and relaxed. The streets are not busy, everything is reasonably central and the pace overall is much more pleasant than Tokyo or Kyoto and presumably other cities such as Osaka and Kobe and the like that we have avoided. This suits the Slow Japan vibe.

I recall when I was teaching English in Tokyo in the 1980s that I would meet others who were working in small towns and cities and loving it. I just didn't get it. Why would you come to Japan and not be in Tokyo but in some provincial backwater? Now I get it. It would have been quite a different experience, and possibly much more enjoyable, to live and teach in Okayama or Kochi or Matsumoto or the like. 

Matsumoto really did have an Alpine feel with the temperature quite noticeably cooler than Kyoto. The streets here are very neat and, like so many other places, they have ornate and unique manhole covers as well as a lot of stone work for barriers and the like where other places might have metal. A much more aesthetic effect.

The town also has the obligatory castle (quite a nice one by the look of the pictures) and other sights but we were not really interested. Fortunately we both enjoy the travelling, as well as the arrival and departure and new places, as much or, probably more, than the sights that are at each destination. Just being in a different town is more interesting to me and, I think, to Rosemary, rather than ticking off the items in the guide book. Thinking about it, it seems odd that the accepted pattern is to plan future travel to a place to look at the past when you get there. Very odd. [insert advertisement for The Now Project here]. To say that, for example, I was excited to be in, and really enjoyed, Matsumoto, without any tangible or recordable reason may sound a little strange but it is true. I could say it is the journey and not the destination that counts, but then I would have to shoot myself after poking hot needles in my eyes for being so trite and I really don't want to do that. 

Shinkansen from Kyoto

Child seat in the men's loos