Monday, March 11, 2013

Japan (Dec12): Day 7 Daytrip to Narai and Matsumoto *Part 1

We started out this day extremely early by catching the 0609am Ltd Express train from Nagano to Shiojiri (about 1hr journey) and then change another local train from Shiojiri to Narai (22mins journey, but wait 1hr for train transfer at Matsumoto). Today's a much colder day compared to the previous few days of our trip. Around -5 degrees celcius on this day...compared to the above 0 degrees on the previous days.
Early 5:45am at Nagano station...going to catch the 6:09am train

Taking the 1hr train onboard a Ltd Exp train from Nagano to Shiojiri station, where we had to wait about 1hr for train transfer towards Narai.



The Ltd Exp train which we took.
At Shiojiri station. Since we had to wait about 1hr for the local train towards Narai, so we just hanged around the station area.
Managed to catch parts of sunrise from Shiojiri train station...
We could have arrived at Narai around 0830am, but we went over our stop by 1 station (because we weren't able to get the train door to open) so took us an extra 40mins waiting for the opposite directional train to get back 1 stop to reach Narai. Sigh...
That was how we ended up at Yabuhara for 40mins, waiting for train.
Opposite Yabuhara station
Yabuhara station



Took this train back from Yabuhara to Narai station.



The ticket from Yabuhara to Narai


Narai is an old Post Town in Kiso Valley near Matsumoto. Since it's located between Kyoto and Tokyo so in the olden days, merchants will stop by in 1 of the Post Towns in Kiso Valley on their way between Kyoto and Tokyo.
Finally...




Narai station.

Narai town








Old notice board







Since we had some time before our train to Matsumoto arrives, we took a short break at this cafe.


Alfred had some grape juice

I had a nice cup of coffee

While chatting with the cafe owner, she introduced us to her dogs. Meet Piano (pink) and Chopin (grey).
Piano is Chopin's daughter.  




After some playtime with the dogs, we had to head for the train station to catch our train to Matsumoto.

Go back to Day 6 Yudanaka to Nagano

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