I've got to get my posts from the end of the summer done so I can catch up to fall before winter starts! . . . so here's the next part:Continuing from last time; our last big trip before my brother and his family went home was
Nagano, Hakuba, and Happo-One (pronounced "hah-poh-oh-nay") which hosted the Winter Olympics in 1998.The city of Nagano is not extremely large (the population is about 400 thousand) but it seems to have a lot of personality. My included picture of the area near our hotel doesn't really do it
justice; it was fun to walk around that neighborhood and get a feel for the character of the city. We had a fantastic dinner in a wonderful restaurant there that had traditional "horigotatsu" seating (seating arrangements on Japanese tatami floors where there are sunken areas beneath the dining tables for comfortable leg room).Hakuba and Happo-One are in the mountains near Nagano. The architecture looked like pictures of Switzerland that I've seen--it was truly a beautiful place. We rode the gondola part of the way up the mountain, and the third picture I included was taken there.
Last week I went back to Hakuba with my school for a conference, but that will have to be in a different post.
