Day 3 - Sunday 27 March 2016
In a few weeks time the town will be full of tourists as they savour the delights of the Weeping Cherry Blossoms. But today things were quieter and the trees bare.
The town itself is not large but along the river is a 3 kms avenue of Weeping Cherry Trees and its is these that give the town the edge. Also, dating from the Edo period are a number of serving Samurai houses.
Our first stop, after coffee and a cake, was the local museum which was not large but interesting. In one of the halls was a craftsman making Cherry Bark tea caddies and trays another local speciality which we had seen in Seibu but not really known what they were.
Back along the main street are some very impressive houses we headed into one of the samurai houses where the owner gave us a short tour of the old part of the house in english which was very interesting. Of course lunch then second and we found a very small restaurant and with the help of google translate ordered two bowls of steaming ramen noodles and veg.
The route to and from the hotel took us over a high pass with many tunnels and deep snow. Mind you before we started the climb a stop at a Japanese garden centre was in order where we bought all kn=inds of useful things including gardening gloves and two pairs of Okatsune secateurs.
Back to the hot bath and dinner at 1930.
In a few weeks time the town will be full of tourists as they savour the delights of the Weeping Cherry Blossoms. But today things were quieter and the trees bare.
The town itself is not large but along the river is a 3 kms avenue of Weeping Cherry Trees and its is these that give the town the edge. Also, dating from the Edo period are a number of serving Samurai houses.
Our first stop, after coffee and a cake, was the local museum which was not large but interesting. In one of the halls was a craftsman making Cherry Bark tea caddies and trays another local speciality which we had seen in Seibu but not really known what they were.
Back along the main street are some very impressive houses we headed into one of the samurai houses where the owner gave us a short tour of the old part of the house in english which was very interesting. Of course lunch then second and we found a very small restaurant and with the help of google translate ordered two bowls of steaming ramen noodles and veg.
The route to and from the hotel took us over a high pass with many tunnels and deep snow. Mind you before we started the climb a stop at a Japanese garden centre was in order where we bought all kn=inds of useful things including gardening gloves and two pairs of Okatsune secateurs.
Back to the hot bath and dinner at 1930.