Montag, 30. April 2012

April 30 - Tokyo, Matsumoto

Anke's alarm clock rang at 5:30 and she left for the Airport at 5:50. She had to walk about 15 minutes to Ueno Park Station and from there she took the NEX (= Narita Express) to the Airport (the day before she had already bought the ticket). I was a little bit sad when she left because we had a really good time together and this "saying goodbye thing" I don't like at all.
So I used the opportunity to talk with Christoph via Skype from 6:00 to 6:30 and when I checked my comments on facebook I saw that Naomi had posted me a message: She would pick me up at 10:00 in the lobby of my hostel. (now our travel plans were fixed, she had booked the hotel the night before:-).
After checking my messages I went back to bed again til 08:15 and checked out at 09:45. For breakfast I asked the receptionist about the nearest convenient store. There I bought my breakfast and ate in the common room of the hotel. While I was eating I met two guys from Korea, Klara and her friend and it was pleasant to have company while eating. At 10:30 Naomi picked me up and we were walking to Ueno Station. It was a cloudy day but not to hot and not to cold either, actually we had perfect weather conditions regarding my cold:-) I was still feeling tired and weak but the sore thorat was gone and now I was suffering from a stuffed nose. Nevertheless the "day off" I had taken the day before had helped a lot and I was already feeling much better than the previous day. Naomi had decided that it would be the best for me to spend some time in the nature to recover soon. Our destinations would be Matsumoto, Kamikouchi and the Japanese Alpes and she called our trip "the noodle trip":-), because we were supposed to eat a lot of noodles for which this area is famous for.
At Ueno Station we bought our tickets and took the train at 12:00. On the way to our first destination "Matsumoto" we got off at Kofu for lunch to eat special noodles called "Houtou" over there.

Houtou noodles in Kofu

eating noodles
From 15:24 to 16:30 we continued our journey to Matsumoto and when we arrived we checked-in first (Naomi had booked a hotel very close to the train station) and went for a walk to a shopping street. Fortunately this was a very short shopping street because we had only time to look around from 17:30 to 18:00 because all stores closed at 6 p.m.


Naomi standing in the middle of the shopping street in Matsumoto

well-known products:-)
Matsumoto and Kamikouchi are one of Naomi's favourite places in Japan. Matsumoto is a small city and mainly famous for its black castle. Actually Naomi's plan was to visit the castle in 2 days but because we had some time and were in the mood for another walk we decided to go to the castle and enjoy the outside part only.

Naomi and I in front of the Black Castle "Matsumoto Castle"

Matsumoto Castle

Matsumoto Castle

Matsumoto Castle at night
We stayed there until it was dark and on the way back to our hotel we chose a very good restaurant.

Naomi at the restaurant

me drinking cocktail (alcohol) to get rid of my bacteria
 One of our dishes was beef with different salt from all over the world. You had to dip the beef into the salt and then eat it that way => IT WAS SOOO DELICIOUS!!!!!

the best beef ever!
We were talking about our travel plans and all the places in the world we wanna see in our life and so it happened that we spent almost 2 hours in the restaurant, eating and talking (19:30 to 21:15).
On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a convenient store, bought our breakfastthere before we went to bed. It was a very nice evening and even though we were already lying in the bed we kept talking til 1:00.
This night I had a really good and deep sleep!

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