Day 18 To Matsumoto visiting Nagono on the way

 This morning as we left our hotel we walked past an enormous queue, not sure what for!

Walked to Kanazawa Station which has an impressive glass dome called the Motenashi (Welcome) Dome and a clock whose numbers are made up of the jets from the fountain.

Although it's a slightly smaller station we still ended up having to ask directions to the right platform. We caught a more modern bullet train and completed the journey to Nagono, around 140 miles, in 55 minutes!

Passing snow capped mountains to the right and The Sea of Japan to the left. As always, it seems, the lowlands are flat. There were several seriously long tunnels that we passed through.

 A taxi ride up to Zenkoji Temple complex showed the stark difference between here and the big cities

The temple was founded in 642 A.D and has one of the oldest Buddahs in Japan, as usual no photos were allowed inside and we had to remove our shoes. The main Temple had a pitch black passageway underneath the main altar in which you can touch "the key to Paradise". Neil managed to find it, I was too busy holding onto his rucksack!

We had lunch in a local Japanese restaurant and then finished looking at the Temple complex. At The Kyozo, a wooden building containing an octagonal rotating shelf which stores the complete collection of Buddhist sutras, the monk asked a group of us to turn the wheel, it was easier than we thought.

Afterwards we had a very expensive ice cream, pistachio is dearer! Then strolled back to the station. The cherry blossom isn't blossoming as much here yet but we did find some

We remembered to collect our rucksack from the locker, bought some of the delicious strawberries from a fruit shop to eat on the train and found our platform with relative ease, as it's a small station.

The hours ride to Matsumoto took us up through mountains and a couple of long tunnels, no photos as the windows were filthy!

We walked to our hotel, only 20 minutes. Went out for dinner and settled in for the evening.