Matsumoto City

Matsumoto, a city located in Nagano Perfecture (Chobu region) , made Special City by the Japanese Government on 1st November 2000. 50 minutes by train from Nagano Station.

As previously stated, we left Nozawa fairly early in the morning to get ourselves back to Nagano by bus to catch a train to Matsumoto as we still needed to get to Takayama by nightfall. We initially only planned to be in Matsumoto for 2 hours as we only wanted to visit the famous Matsumoto castle, but because we were going to be taking the sneaker bus , 2 hours was going to be wayyy to short for us to be in Matsumoto. We started off with the castle first, as we were hoping to be able to finish it quickly but we quickly made a decision to catch the last bus to Takayama after seeing the castle. (The Matsumoto Town Sneaker Bus Northern Course would take one to most of the tourist attractions - runs at 30 minutes interval).

The famous Matsumoto Castle

Matsumoto castle, also known as Fukashi Castle and Crow's castle, due to it's black walls. *a stark difference to Himeji Castle, which hadvery white walls*. Originally built in 1504, it is now listed as a National Treasure in Japan.

Compulsory photo time :)

An entrance ticket to the castle and the city's museum (it comes together) costs 600yen, but because we were foreigners and Yokoso Japan!, our tickets were discounted - 480 yen. Being the first castle I've seen in Japan, I awe-struck by the beauty of it all. We spent a long time wandering on the grounds of the castle before moving into the castle itself (and taking more pictures!). As all places, as we soon discovered, it was shoes off-slippers on, whenever we enter a temple/shrine/castle. That itself wasn't an easy feat for some of us, given my aching knees.

The castle itself was built to a 6 storey building, but with one of them as a 'hidden' floor, so when one looks from the outside, the castle only seem to have 5 storeys. There was 2 towers in the castle, connected to each other by a bridge on the second floor, and to get to the main tower, one needs to enter the castle through the minor first, which was a fairly interesting concept. The steps in the castle were fairly steep, and the rooms itself were fairly dark. I remember thinking to myself at that time, "I would be pretty miserable living in here. There was no light, and I cannot see the sun :(.". But I think the guys would have liked it - it was a prefect place to play hide & seek.

The walls in the castles had holes, which I thought was weird initially, but later made sense. They were places where they used to place their weapons in case the castle came under attack. There was two types, square and rectangular. Square ones called teppozama for firearms and rectangular - yazama for arrows. It was in this castle that I first seen the samurai attire on display. They looked to weigh a ton, and we were quite amused at the little holes they made to fit the moustaches and beards of the samurai on the mask.

View from Tsukimi-yagura, the moon viewing room
(My favourite place in the castle)

Anyway, from there we then wandered into the Matsumoto City Museum since we had some time to spare and also because we've already paid for it :P. Took random photos in the museum, seen a few ancient tools, clothes and found something that got me a little... hooked. STAMPS!! Picture stamps/chops/seal, whatever you call it. :P. The Japanese must really like their stamps and all these cute, coz a lot of the historical sites has picture stamps. *Should have gotten a book for all my stamps!!*

A miniature model of the castle

By the time we finished the museum, we were starving and started our hunt for food. Much to our dismay, nowhere was open for lunch anymore at that time!! (It was about 3pm then). After about almost an hour walking around and still not finding a place that was serving lunch, we almost resorted to having food in 7-11 as they had the box lunches for sale.

Nawate street - popular shopping street along river Metoba. Frogs are a symbol for this street.

We eventually found a place for lunch opposite the train station :). Which was pretty decent food. And as we still had some time before catching the bus to Takayama, we decided to wander around town and ended up in the supermarket instead, which was heaven! Have you seen their supermarket ? With the food section? The dessert section?!?!?! The choices, the colours, the designs, the packagings, the everything! It's like a dessert heaven - but in a supermarket =D.

Our long awaited lunch :) , after an hour of searching in hunger.

Supermarket food galore - look at the choices and the colours! Aren't they just marvellous?

We finally left Matsumoto for Takayama by bus at about 530 pm. We were so tired by the end of it, and I slept most of the way in that 2.5 hours bus ride. The only times that I woke up was when it felt too hot in the bus due to the heating. We were quite suprised at how the locals could withstand the heat with all their winter clothings on. We, on the other hand, stripped down to almost our last layers :(.