Hello, Big Mountains and Snow!

So, we've arrived in Nagano, the second destination of our Japanese travels.  Nagano is a smaller snow-covered town at the base of the Japanese Alps and it's north of and about midway between Kyoto and Tokyo.  We took a night bus from Kyoto last night and arrived in the quiet and sleepy town of Nagano at 6am this morning.  I have been so impressed with the generosity and kindheartedness of the Japanese people; we were not only RUN to our bus that we almost missed because we were at the wrong station by a helpful bus worker, but there was also a young man who walked with us the 10 minutes in the dark in the cold at 6am to our hotel this morning and then had to walk back to the train station to catch his own connecting train.  Everyone helps so genuinely and insists on doing so even when we insist it's too much.  It's not the same type of gushy, overly energetic hospitality of Jordan, but it's amazed me to see how hospitable people are all over the world.  We arrived safely to our hotel, Smile Hotel, this morning but were dismayed to learn that no one spoke any English and the only available computer access was a computer from the 90s that we had to feed coins to use.  We were hoping for help from the hotel staff to locate this obscure snow monkey park we want to visit tomorrow.  So, at 6-7ish am we paid to use the 90s computer and booked a room in a hostel across town since we hadn't technically paid for Smile Hotel yet.  We walked to the hostel but no one answered the door and we weren't allowed to leave our belongings there until 10am.  We spent about 3 hrs in a freezing cold McDonald's trying to sleep (after being told we couldn't sleep in a nearby coffee house) and then at 10am made our way to the hostel.  It wouldn't be an adventure if we didn't run into these little logistical issues!  We checked into our hostel, owned by a beautiful little Japanese couple with one son about our age who'd been to the US once to visit a Native American reservation in South Dakota, so beautiful, and then we set out to see the Zenko-ji Temple, a beautiful structure framed by the snow-covered Alps.  Such a contrast from the shrines in Kyoto, less urbanized, less red and yellow and orange and green leaves in the eyes' view. 

Statues in front of the temple.

Big mama goddess.

Zenko-ji temple with Alps in the background.

The swastika is used specifically in Hinduism and Buddhism as a sacred symbol for good luck.  It is also a Chinese character used around East Asia to represent eternity in Buddhism.

 We ate dinner at this lovely buffet-style restaurant with all local food and floor seating on tatami mats.

Delicious.