Bicycle: 40 km
Average speed: 14,2 km/h
Total ascent: 216 m
Weather: very sunny, a bit windy, warm but bearable, 26 C
For my last vacation day I stayed close to Nagano and went to the valley where I hadn’t gone yesterday to visit the castle ruins there.
Probably the most impressive today however were the mountains all around. Everywhere! I know that Japan is a very mountainous country, but somehow I just didn’t really realize it. And today there was no denying it.
(Yesterday all these mountains were hiding behind the rain clouds).
My first official stop was a battle field, now transformed into a serene park used by the locals to walk their dogs or play with their children. But once upon the time it was the witness to one of the bloodiest battles in the Sengoku 戦国 (literally “war country”) period of Japan.
Continuing just over the river were the remains (well actually the re-build remains) of the Matsushiro castle.
What I hadn’t expected was the village around with many other sightseeing spots. Among them the residence of the feudal lord of the castle (when he decided to no longer live in the castle itself), a school for the children of samurai, some other old houses and a much more modern construction.
The residence had a lot of tatami rooms and a very nice garden.
The only other place I visited was the modern construction in the last months of the war of an enormous underground tunnel system that was dug mainly by Korean forced laborers. Only a relatively small part of it is publicly accessible, but that small part is still pretty big and requires a lot of walking underground in the cold. In total apparently 6 km of tunnel were dug to host the government and all kind of government facilities. Somewhere else (not too far away) also a special bunker for the emperor was dug. None of this ever got used as the American advances were faster than the digging. Thanks to local residents the site has been opened since a few years. They also had a good English pamphlet explaining the history.
Originally I also wanted to visit a shrine on a hill in that valley but I got lazy and had lunch instead and then returned to Nagano, where I packed up my bike for one last time on this trip to take the Shinkansen back home. I had bought my ticket already in the small station of Tsunan a few days ago and the JR employee there had suggested to go with unreserved seats, so I could be sure to get a place for my bike behind the last row off seats. Luckily there are Shinkansen starting from Nagano. If not it would have been impossible.
This is a “slow” Shinkansen stopping at every possible station, but still since Takasaki all non reserved seats are taken and people are standing in the aisles. But I am sitting and more importantly my bicycle is standing behind my seat.
Oh yes, and it is “cosmos” time. Yet another of the season defining flowers of Japan.
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