Our Trip to Nagano!

In February, we went on a 3 day trip with Matt and Chelsea to Nagano, where the 1998 Winter Olympics were held. We rented a Mazda here in Gifu City and drove 3 1/2 hours north to Nagano. The car was great because it had a navigation system that was really helpful! Although it only spoke in Japanese, we were still able to follow the arrows on the screen.

Zenkoji Temple

Nagano is such a nice quaint city! We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express that was really close to the main area of the city that had streets filled with small stores selling Japanese pottery, paper umbrellas, snacks, etc. We bought a lot of great souvenirs here, including Frank's favorite, a traditional Japanese sword! After shopping, we went to the Zenkoji Temple. It was very crowded because it was the first night of the Lantern Festival, which honors the Nagano Olympics by lighting-up the temple with the five Olympic colors.

Snowboarding

On our second day we went snowboarding! We drove about 30 minutes into the mountains while it was snowing.

Snowboarding was really fun, but a little more challenging than we thought. We spent more time on our butts than standing up! The weather was great. It snowed some of the time but was always sunny.

Snow Monkeys
The main reason we visited Nagano was to see the snow monkeys. So on our third day, we drove an hour from Nagano to Yudinaka. We began by taking a 30 minute walk into the woods to a monkey park where the monkeys run wild and bathe in the hot springs. There were monkeys everywhere!

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