Dec 29 - Tokyo to Nagano

We had a bit of a sleep in waking after 6am. We had already bought breakfast so we were able to eat, pack up and check out of our accommodation at 8:50am. We were on a train and in Tokyo by 9:15am.

We made our way to the Shinkansen gates and found it was not the sea of people we experienced when we came to Tokyo on the 26th. So we were pleasantly suprised at the low crowd. Being the 29th we were expecting it to be far more crowded.

At the gate we asked about tapping off our suica cards (forgot to use the Shinkansen ticket at Tabata st) and were told to tap suica and insert shinkasen ticket. When Oscar went to do that his errored, as he has a child suice for this trip, but we got him an adult Shinkansen ticket. We had to change the Shinkansen ticket to child, then meet up with the others who had already passed through the gate.

We lined up on track 23, and headed for car 2 (most un-reserved seats) and waited at the end of the line sign. We were about 20 people deep for the 9:44am Asama.

We easily got seats for the 4 of us, there was even spare seats until we got to Ueno. Arriving at 11:33am we walked to our hotel and dropped of the bags, before crossing over the station side to grab some lunch just before 1pm.

The kids and I went to Saizariya while hubby found some GF options. Then we walked around the shops a bit having a look until it was close enough to check in time to head to the hotel. Our room was a large triple, this was bigger than expected.

At about 5:30 we headed out for dinner. The kids weren't really hungry after our late lunch, so we got them combini dinner. Hubby and I went to a gluten free soba noodle place. After this we hit up Donki for dessert. Then headed back to the hotel for the night.Read more