15 January 2026 – Nagano and Chikuma

We started the day at the Mercure, Nagano. After leaving Fiji on the 30th of December we had been in Airbnbs every night, so a hotel buffet breakfast sounded like a nice change. But for the prices they were charging (including kids at adult prices) we decided we’d do our konbini (convenience store breakfast).

Morning onsen and konbini breakfasts

The sunrise from our hotel window towards the mountains surrounding the city was very pretty, and we were looking forward to a day of exploring more of the city.

While Astrid was doing her usual teenager slow getting ready, Anto and Soren took advantage of another onsen and sauna (for Anto). We then we stored our luggage for the day, so we had more space in the car, and head off to one of the nearby convenience stores for coffee and breakfast croquettes, buns, and other assorted sweet items. We then visited the next door pharmacy for the next round of meds for the continuing sick people (mostly just Nic and Soren – still!).

Driving up to Togakushi….

First on the agenda was Togakushi Shrine, which is actually a series of 5 shrines in various locations up Mount Togakushi. After we negotiated the traffic in Nagano city area, we made our way towards Mount Togakushi and started heading up the steep road.

The road was winding and a series of hairpins, covered in nets and a roof (presumably to keep snow and avalanches off) and some very grooved roads to help with the ice.

Oskusha….

It was some rather scary driving at times, but it was interspersed with wonderful views. The top of mountain is at almost 2000m above sea level but we were headed for the top shrine, Okusha. You can walk from the top shrine to bottom or vice versa but it’s approximately 3.5 hours each way and longer in the snow. There are also shuttles in between the shrines. Given we had the car, we head up to the top shrine, with a plan to work our way down. It was about an hour of hairy driving from leaving the hotel to reaching Okusha.

When we arrived at Okusha, it turns out the main shrine path was closed today due to avalanche risk, so we couldn’t do the full walking route past the cedar avenue and a mirror pond (which would have been ice today anyway).

We did get to do a nice snowy walk through the torii gates and and down the path to see the giant cedars. There was a lot of snow!

In Nagano city there is snow on the ground, but it was closer to Hakuba levels of snow up here, and also below zero degrees. Like the monkey park the day before, we again saw people attempting the hike in sneakers, some with crampons. Some of these people ended up down snow holes deeper than Zinnia! We could spy a few holes as we walked along and wondered how deep the snow actually was, but didn’t want to find out by falling in.

The Togakushi shrines are related to an important story in Japanese mythology in which the Sun Goddess hid herself in a cave after her brother had misbehaved, thereby bringing darkness to the world. In order to get the sunlight back, the other deities tried to lure the Sun Goddess out of the cave by performing spectacular dance performances in front of it. As the Sun Goddess took a peek out, one of the deities grabbed the cave’s stone door and threw it away to prevent her from hiding again. The stone door flew all the way to Togakushi. Togakushi literally means “hiding door”.

Today, the upper shrine worships the deity who grabbed and threw away the stone door.

The very tall cedar trees lining the path to the shrine were very pretty all laden with snow.

The path from the shrine to the mirror pond was indeed closed due to avalanche risk. We were happy to abide by this one!

They seemed keen to let us know not to go in there!

On the walk back down the trail and towards the car the kids all made snowballs. Which seemed to involve rolling snow into bigger and bigger balls they wanted to carry along. At least they were having fun 🙂

It was a particularly pretty walk into the shrine in the snow and again we were glad for the snow boots. It was definitely less icy than the walk to the monkey park the previous day and no children were lost in piles of snow off the edge of the path.

Chusha….

As the walking route down to the middle shrine, Chusha was partly closed due to the snow/avalanche risk, the only option was to walk on the road, which was very icy. So we were glad we had the car! It wasn’t all that far but it would have been a bit treacherous.

The middle shrine is called Chusa and enshrines the deity who organised the dance performances to lure the Sun Goddess out of the cave. We arrived down at Chusa and found that the shrine is right next to the car park for this one. This was super convenient and it was not very busy compared to the top shrine.

This shrine had some cool frozen ice in the fountains and some very tall trees, which were quite impressive.

The middle shrine looks over a small town of shops and restaurants. We were planning to see the lower shrine next, and it was too early for lunch, so we jumped back in the car rather than wandering through the town. Unfortunately we discovered the lower shrine had no car parking. After doing a couple of laps up and down, we established there was no where to park other than at the middle shrine and then walk down. It wasn’t far but it would have been an icy walk on the main road. Instead we looked at the shrine from the car and head down the mountain descent.

It was a somewhat better drive on the way down as we knew what we were in for.

The views looking back over Nagano and towards the mountains on this cold January day were very pretty.

Lunch in Nagano…..

Next on the agenda was a visit to Zenko-Ji temple, back in Nagano. It was now lunch time so we found a park for the car and had a wander through the area near the temple in search of somewhere for lunch.

We found a restaurant not far from the temple that looked like it might even have something I could eat. Obtaining vegetarian food without fish or dashi was an ongoing challenge. The waitress agreed the tempura without the dipping sauces was fine (I’ve been eating a lot of tempura) but also thought I looked hungry so insisted I also have some grilled veggies, bread and a salad made up, which all turned out to be very good.

Zinnia had a kids meal that included a strange combo of fries, fried chicken and sushi. Astrid and Soren got cutlet sets with some tomato and cheese sauce, and Anto a curry set. It was all very good and it was nice to sit in the warm after our snowy morning adventures.

Zenko-Ji Temple….

From the lunch restaurant it was a short walk to the Zenko-Ji temple. The 7th century Buddhist temple is one of the remaining pilgrimage sites in Japan. The city of Nagano began as a town built around the temple.

The temple wasn’t too busy, compared to the crowds we’ve faced in other places, and in particular some of the temples.

There were plenty of stores in the path leading to the temple, many of which had some tempting treats, but we were luckily pretty full from just eating lunch.

We first visited the Sanmon gate which contains five wooden Buddhist statues as well as a plaque with calligraphy by the Imperial prince, which is said to contain five hidden doves in the lettering.

The main hall which is located at the northern end of the temple complex is considered a national treasure.

There were some quite interesting garden areas within the temple grounds. Even under snow there were some very pretty sections. I’m sure it looked even better at other times of the year.

One of the interesting things we found at this temple was the fire ceremony where people get their wishes burnt. The kids were quite fascinated by this.

They did have safety fire hoses right nearby!

We bid farewell to the temple and wandered back out in the direction of our car.

Off for some Olympic memorabilia..

Back to the car and we were off to check out some Olympic sites. Nagano hosted the 1998 Winter Olympics. Most of the ski events were held around Hakuba, where we’d been during the preceding week, but Nagano city held many of the other events during the ’98 Olympics.

There is an Olympics museum at M-Wave, the Olympic speed skating venue. We’d read varying reviews on this museum. A lot of people said it was fabulous and others complained it was small and not that great. I’m a bit of an Olympic nut and we’d all enjoyed previous visits to ski jumps and other Olympic venues during our European travels, so we were keen to check it out. The M-Wave building is quite distinctive from the outside and the name is derived from the wave of the roof, representing the mountain ranges of Nagano.

There were a few cars in the car park and it was a bit of a hike around the building to find the best way in, and we went past the tiled wall where each of the tens of thousands of tiles was a participant, volunteer or contributor. They cover the outside halls of the building and were rather interesting.

This museum was entirely free entry and we were also the only people there! There were some staff hiding in one of the offices somewhere but no other visitors.

The museum was awesome. There was actually a lot of memorabilia from a heap of other Winter and Summer Olympics, including torches, equipment and medals. I’d expected it to be largely Nagano 1998 memorabilia but there was a huge variety of items from many of the Winter and Summer Olympics over the past 40 or more years.

There were plenty of photos and videos from the Nagano Olympics, and original equipment including skis and uniforms. You were able to touch and pick up many of the items. Soren quickly discovered the curling stones are incredibly heavy.

There was also a bobsleigh simulator, in an actual bobsleigh. This was quite the hit with the kids!

We enjoyed looking at posters and medals from many games. We had a game of working out how many of the cities that had hosted Olympics we’d actually visited. It turns out quite a few!

We all thoroughly enjoyed it looking around and finding many treasures. From the main museum area you could go into the arena and see the full sized speed skating arena and also stand on the medal dais. Yes we might have enjoyed our own little victory ceremony!

Standing inside the speed skating arena you get a better idea of just how enormous they are. This one had a regular ice skating rink in the centre area which people were figure skating on during our visit. The wooden roof was also incredibly beautiful.

A Snowy drive to Chikuma….

The museum was a hit with all of us and I’d highly recommend a visit for any Olympic or just sport lover.
We could have stayed even longer but had to be on our way as it was a 30km drive to Chikuma, our next stop for the trip.

We were staying in a Ryokan (traditional Japanese Inn for the night). We thought we’d try this for one night of our trip, and chose Kamesei Ryokan in nearby Chikuma. The drive there was mildly terrifying on tiny roads with no line marking and side drop offs. Our Japanese hire car wasn’t exactly huge but even so letting cars past was interesting.

A night at the Ryokan….

We arrived just after 5pm and our names were on the sign at the front, along with the other guests for the night.

The common areas of the Ryokan were very pretty. We had to leave our shoes at the front and don house slippers for our stay. After several days in snow or ski boots all day long, we weren’t complaining.

We were shown to our room, where we could get changed into our yukata and have our tea and cookies. We had booked a family room and it was quite spacious while the beds were not yet set up. The room was all tatami mats (hence the no shoes as they destroy the mats).

The traditional Onsen Inn is run by a Japanese-American couple. The cookies are a traditional recipe from the American half of the partnership, served with traditional Japanese tea. The kids enjoyed our little tea and cookie ceremony.

Dinner and breakfast are usually included in the room, and they had checked dietary requirements on booking and were very thorough so I knew I was getting food I could eat with no dashi tonight!

Our dinner was booked for 6 in the dining room and when we arrived we all had our own dinner set out.

Soren and Zinnia had an adapted kids set (much to Soren’s disgust as he wanted more fish things that mostly appeared in the adult set). Anto and Astrid had the regular adult meal and I had a special vegetarian set.

There was so much food, and it kept coming! It was all prepared by the chef owner (Chef Takei) and we had an explanation of each dish. Much of it was local produce and seasonal.

Some things were an acquired taste but most were very good. We all had our favourite items and there was definitely too much food for one meal. Even though individual dishes were quite small there seemed to be endless amounts of them.

Everyone was defeated by the amount of food and sake, and we head off to do an Onsen. We’d had an Onsen at our Nagano Mercure, where we’d stayed the previous night. As they were traditional Onsens, they were again sex segregated as no clothing was allowed. So I head off with the girls while Anto and Soren went to investigate their Onsen. This Onsen was smaller than the Mercure but still had an inside and outside baths and the water was a lovely temperature, especially with the freezing air outside.

When we returned, our room had been set up with the futons on the tatami mats for the nights sleep.

When booking our accommodation for Japan we generally avoid traditional tatami mats and futons, which at times can be challenging when booking both Airbnbs and hotels. But we’d decided one night in a traditional Ryokan would be a ‘fun’ experience. I can’t say I was looking forward to my night of sleeping on the floor but the futons weren’t as thin as they could have been and we were all rather tired, so we settled in for some (hopefully) sleep.

Up next…

The rest of our Ryokan visit, including an amazing Ryokan breakfast. Then it was off to Ueda and a castle visit, before the Shinkansen to Tokyo and an afternoon visiting Asakusa and Senso-Ji temple before a sunset visit to Tokyo Skytree.