Today we had to get up very early to catch our train to Matsumoto, but the train ride through the mountains was very beautiful and made up for any lack of sleep. In Matsumoto, we took a bus to Matsumoto Castle, where we took a lot of pictures of the grounds (and cherry blossoms) surrounding the castle.

I think the cherry blossoms were probably more beautiful here than anywhere else so far. We also got to tour the interior of the castle, which was pretty interesting (which was good, because there was a long line of people waiting to go up to the top floor so we got a nice long look at everything along the way). Unfortunately, we had to take our shoes off and this castle was not built with carpeting, so our feet were pretty cold by the time it was over. Even more unfortunate was that the steps up to the top were very very steep and narrow, so climbing back down was difficult, since we could not feel our feet!

After finishing the tour, we walked back to the train station, stopping for lunch along the way. We selected a restaurant that had plastic food models in the front window. We’ve discovered that this is a really great safeguard in case the restaurant does not have an English menu. We will probably be sticking to this rule a lot more strictly after this evening (you’ll read more on this later). As it turned out, there was not an English menu, so we got to go back outside and point. We both chose a dish with soba noodles, which Matsumoto is known for. I also noticed that there was a large plastic model of a bottle of beer, so I pointed at that as well. When they brought our food, we discovered that the plastic model was actually to scale, so I ended up with a LOT of beer (think wine bottle filled with beer). I love this country. 

We made our way back to the train station, where we boarded a train for Nagano. We had planned to tour Nagano, but when we got there we were pretty tired and ready to go on to Tokyo, so we took a picture of the Olympic Rings and moved on. 

In Tokyo, we found our hotel and got settled before checking out the Ginza shopping neighborhood where the hotel is located. Ginza is full of a lot of very high-end stores (like Cartier and Prada), so we spent much of our evening with me dragging Charles into various stores and Charles sweating until we left each store. We finally decided it was time to get serious about finding dinner, which is where things went awry….

As it turned out, Ginza’s restaurants are also a bit on the high-end side of the scale and we were hoping for something a little less expensive. We walked and walked, looking for something a little more casual, but just kept striking out. We headed back toward our hotel, since we knew there was a McDonalds just down the street. Just before reaching McDonalds, we finally found a restaurant called Miso Bank. There was no plastic food, but the menu was posted outside (in Japanese) and the prices looked very reasonable, so we decided to give it a shot.

When we were seated, we discovered that they, in fact, did not have an English menu. Although the name of the restaurant was printed in English, the rest of the menu was written almost completely in Japanese characters, with the exception of the category names. Charles and I were left to point blindly at an entry on the menu and hope for the best. I chose something from the “chicken” category and hoped it didn’t come with feathers and claws. Charles chose something from the “pork” category.

As we waited for the food, I would glance up and see the two waiters smiling at us and chuckling under their breath, which made us even more apprehensive. When my food did come, it turned out that I had ordered some kind of ground chicken meatballs with a poached egg and sauteed onion. It wasn’t bad, but there definitely wasn’t much of it.

Charles’ food came next and he had something that looked like chunks of bacon, some mushrooms, and a slice of red pepper (really… just one slice). The pork was raw, but they brought out a personal grill where he grilled his own dinner. I quickly finished what I suspect may have been an appetizer and spent the rest of the time watching Charles cook his bacon on his mini Coleman camp grill.

We immediately proceeded to McDonalds thereafter and had much better luck with the McEggBurger, which Charles will describe in greater detail.