A day in Nagano

Time for another rest day on Wednesday, we we're both feeling a bit trashed, so rather than push ourselves, we decided to take a day off from skiing. Headed into Nagano on the train, it's about an hour away. Misch and I had a coffee and chai latte respectively at Starbucks, such a relief to hear some nice music on the playlist instead of the incessant and saccarine Jpop! We then had a look at a ski shop, new ski socks for both of us, I couldn't find any decent googles so I passed on the darth vader influence looking stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv5iEK-IEzw

We visited the info centre at the station to enquire about getting to Obuse. It's an old town not far away that has a Hakusai museum, about 40 works in all along with some other interesting collections. Also found out that there was a vego restaurant nearby so we headed off there for a nice lunch. The decor was earthy and imaginative - check out the photo of the light bulb and shade made from fine natural fiber, it reminded me of a birds nest.

We then split up, Misch hit the 100 yen shop and I went off looking for a camera store I'd browsed in a few years ago, found it but it was closed that day. I wandered around taking some photos instead, found some interesting back streets and shrines.