Day 3 - Nikko, Nagano, Shiga Kogen

Day 3 - Snow time. Nikko - Nagano - Shiga Kogen
We were up early and out into some beautiful sunshine Nikko displayed for our leaving. We caught the 7:37am train back to Asakusa at 9:33am, then a quick hop on the metro over to Ueno. The plan was to grab some lunch and exchange JR passes for after skiing, but the line was really long and slow, so we just bought our shinkasen tickets for Nagano, from another slow moving line, so we missed the 10:30 train and opted for the 11:30 on instead. These trains were pretty much full. The JR person said to try non-reserved to sit together. Our lunch was a grab something that looks ok from the konbini at Ueno station and head to the platform to line up for non-reserved. We got seats together on a pretty packed train arriving at 12:50.
At Nagano there was no one in the foreign person part of the JR service centre, but issuing the JR passes took a while, a long while. Then we also booked our journey to Kyoto, and from Osaka back to Tokyo for later in the trip. By this time we did a quick power walk from one side, out of the station, then back the other realising we did have much time to kill, and we wanted to make the 2:15pm Nagano Snow Shuttle. We were one of the first on this quite packed bus. As we were leaving it started to snow, this continued to snow more as we ascended towards Shiga Kogen, at times the road was covered in white. The bus driver put chains on once we reached Shiga Kogen. We have never had that happen before.
It was snowing big fat flakes on our arrival. We collected our bags delivered by takqbin, and checked in. Then headed back out for food, luckily the shuttle arrived moments after we stepped outside, as the walk in the snow would have not been fun. We went to the junk food cafe for dinner (7,100) and even tried our first crepes. Probably won't try it again, I have a really sweet tooth, but it is just too much. It was freezing cold and still snowing while we waited for a shuttle to return. Daughter and I hit the onsen to warm up, even convinced hubby to take son into the onsen for his first time.
We ski tomorrow....its looking good.Read more