View from our hotel window in the morning

Today, we woke up early at around 7:30 AM and left for Shinjuku Station to reach our next destination: The Japanese Alps. We got up so early in fact, that we had an hour to waste at Shinjuku Station. After looking for a Bento (Lunchbox) but failing to find one, we decided to go to the only(!) Café, we could see in the vicinity. The food was okay, nothing to write home about. Then we checked out our train - and found Bento! It was being sold directly on the platform of our departure. Pretty convenient. (Later I found out, that all the rest of the shops and restaurants were on a completely different floor of the station… Japan, you can be confusing at times.)

Check out an interactive Map of the places we visited here. I will update this map as we continue our Journey. This post is about Day 4.

The Bento-Shop sold Drinks in the form of little Trains, why not?

Our train left Shinjuku punctually at 10 AM sharp – and we were off. The weather was nice, the train was spotless, the Wi-Fi on the train worked. Everything was dandy!

After about 2 hours of riding the train, I decided to crack open my Bento box. It was underwhelmingly bland but did the job of making me less hungry.

This is also, where things went south. There was a signal disturbance that affected our train. We had to make an impromptu stop and then nothing happened for about 1:30 hours. Except for the train clerk anouncing over and over again that they were sorry and that there was a problem with the signal and that they are working to fix it and that it would probably be fixed soon.

We reached our transfer station just one minute late for us to catch our connecting train to our destination. So we had to wait another hour. So all in all, I had a lot of time to think about and observe the behaviour of people. Some things I noted were:

• Japanese people don't wear sunglasses (Of course some do but surprisingly little. During our trip I saw 2 Japanese people out of maybe 100 that would wear sunglasses and - as said - it was a sunny day today)
• On our route, there was very little renewable energy and thinking back, I never noticed wind power in all my travels in Japan. Also, there was only one solar park on the whole route from Tokyo to the Japanese Alps.
• People traveling to the Japanese Alps are serious about hiking. Most people wore functional clothes, hiking boots, some even walking/hiking sticks, even though the terrain in the Japanese alps is easy to moderate compared to most hiking routes in Austria/Switzerland/Norway…
• There are amazing restrooms everywhere but most of them don't have soap in them. So prepare to bring your own sanitizer!

At 3:45 PM, we reached our destination: Narai-Juku! A post-town in the Japanese Alps. These towns were laying on the route of the post transports between Kyoto and Tokyo. A few hundred years later, a lot of the houses are still pretty well kept and people still actually still work an live here – mostly in the tourism industry of course.

We checked into our Minshuku (Guest House) shortly after arriving. It is located right in the town center with very pretty houses all around!

We walked around in Narai-Juku and found some cute shops. We had such a lovely "talk" (we tried to communicate in all the ways possible) with an elderly lady that sold us handmade postcards that her deceased husband made (they were 1€ each). Encounters like this make the trip to Japan completely worth it! At 5PM, most of the shops close and thus, most of the people leave Narai-Juku. Finally, we could take some pictures without people in them! I didn't realise, that cars could also pass through this ancient town which kind of "ruins the vibe" but I guess it's necessary since this town is still actively lived in and not only a backdrop for pretty pictures. Anyway, here's the last picture of pretty houses (for today). At 6 PM it was dinner time. I was pretty hungry before so I had a few nuts.

The dinner started with just a few plates, pictured above. Our host gave us only this much information about the proceedings of the evening: "Dinner is served between 6 PM and 7:15 PM". I thought: Good, that I ate some nuts before since this is not much at all! Next, our host brought out boiled vegetables that we could dip into a sauce that he prepared. Pretty nice but I was still hungry, I ate two bowls of rice with that. There were a lot more courses to follow after that though:

• Clam chowder
• Grilled Trout
• Horse Sashimi (delicious with garlic sauce!)
• Tempura
• Miso Soup
• Fruits
• Ice cream

I left about 2kg heavier than before. Everything was delicious, prepared with care and served with love. I was happily surprised! We finished the evening by going to the bath in the Guest House which was reserved especially for us! It was a Japanese Sento: A bath were you wash yourself before resting in the hot water (thermal bath). It is soo relaxing to feel the warmth on your tired muscles.

Aparently, in Japan, my name is Mr. Jonas.