We had a very pleasant time with Mr & Mrs Takizawa at Matsumoto. They were so kind to us in not only having us as guests but also taking us to a number of local sights, and even stopping by at the Post Office to enable us to get some money on the way back to the station.
They have a very peaceful Onsen and we enjoyed being able to rest and take it easy after our busy travel schedule of the previous few days. I think that we managed to survive our stay without any major breaches of etiquette, although our very gratious hosts would never have been so impolite to have told us of any should we have.
The countryside here is surrounded by the Japanese Alps. It is so different from Australia. Not only are never really out of sight of some form of building, every little patch of ground (even in the city here at Matsumoto) is used to grow some form of produce. The photo in this blog shows a little village that we passed yesterday in the train.
Today’s train trip takes us a little over 800 mms to Hiroshima. The first is on one of the long distance express trains to Nagoya, and then by Shinkansen (Bullet Train) for the remainder of the journey.
