Recently, I was in Japan for about 6 weeks, and at the end of October, I did a 3-day trip to Nagano and Niigata. I decided to do this a day before I actually went, and I wasn’t really in either place to do normal stuff – I didn’t go to ryokan or onsen or Jigokudani in Nagano, for example. Instead, I really wanted to go to Niigata because one of my favorite bands, Polkadot Stingray, was playing a concert there on the 29th.
A short trip like this isn’t for everyone, but I’ve been to Japan many times over the last decade, so I don’t mind really short trips in places, both to get a sense of them without committing a lot of time, and because I don’t need to see a lot of “normal” things.
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## Day 0 – October 27 – The JR East Nagano-Niigata Pass
I decided to go last minute and booked my hotels and get the JR East Nagano/Niigata pass.
This pass is 18000 yen and is really easy to purchase. Like all special JR Passes now, it’s [a paper ticket](https://i.imgur.com/bAOw6TQ.jpg) that can be used with automated gates. I tried using the special JR Pass vending machines you can find inside Midori no Madoguchi offices, which require you to scan a non-Japanese passport and allows you to buy special passes like the JR East and Tokyo Wide Pass.
However, I had to switch to buying the pass directly from a station employee because I forgot that the ticket/pass machines require credit cards with a PIN set on them, and I didn’t have enough cash to cover the pass.
## Day 1 – Friday/October 28 – Nagano
Took a 90 minute morning Shinkansen from Ueno Station to Nagano Station. The train was completely _packed_ the entire way.
### Nagano (the city)
I don’t think many people typically stay or look around the actual city because most of the stuff visitors go to (Jigokudani, ski resorts, onsen) are usually 30-40 km away from the city center. The city itself is very walkable, and served by some buses and a subway line (Nagano Dentetsu) that makes a few stops inside the city and goes out to Yudanaka.
The weather was perfect the day I showed up, like 40-50F, and blue, mostly clear skies.
### Zenkoji Temple
I’m a big shrine/temple person, and this is the big one in the area (built sometime in the 600s). I walked the 2 km here from the Nagano Station, and the road leading to it has a statue commemorating [the 1998 Winter Olympics](https://i.imgur.com/eD4TWPr.jpg), as well as coffee shops and a store dedicated to selling goshuincho. Once you get closer to the temple, there’s a shopping street with various restaurants and souvenir shops.
The temple was lovely and [quite busy](https://i.imgur.com/BT9dxp7.jpg) for a Friday afternoon. Since Nagano is located in the mountains, you get lovely views of them from [anywhere on the temple grounds](https://i.imgur.com/tSiyzt4.jpg).
The temple complex is rather large, and the main building has a dark, underground passage you can go into (for a fee) to search for the “key of salvation,” which is a key attached to a wall in the passageway.
The temple also loves _daruma_, so they sell them in various sizes and colors (the different colors represent different things like love, luck, business success, health, etc.).
For the goshuin lovers out there, they were doing a special one during this time, the [_gyūshuin_](https://i.imgur.com/00XGfRH.jpg). Yes, I can hear the groans out there now.
### Chausuyama Zoo
It was early afternoon and I decided to go to the zoo because they have a number of red pandas (my favorite animal) and I found out from Instagram that the zoo was in the area.
Getting to the zoo required taking the train from Nagano to Shinonoi, and then a 15 minute taxi ride from the station to halfway up Chausuyama.
Entrance was 600 yen, and if you’re not a zoo person, I would say this zoo is probably going to make you even less of a zoo person. Some of the animals were kept in much smaller confines than is typical for such animals (especially tigers and lions) – I was a little saddened at that.
The zoo does have 15 red pandas, including 2 twins born earlier this year. One red panda was [doing a lot of tree climbing](https://i.imgur.com/MupjjP7.png).
### Chausuyama Hike
Remember how I took a taxi to the top of a mountain? Well…the zoo doesn’t have a taxi stand. It does have an infrequent bus that goes down the mountain, but I didn’t want to wait around or bother to call a cab. So…I decided to take the hike down the mountain path, which was probably an ill-advised venture, since it’s an active driving road with no shoulder or pedestrian walkways, but [it had great views](https://imgur.com/a/bFqfBMe)! Not pictured were the many apple orchards I walked by as Chausuyama has tons of them and they all looked like they were getting just about ripe for picking.
Overall a fun walk but there were multiple blind curves I had to rush a little on because I knew cars hit them at full speed.
### Hotel and Eats
* Coffee – Foret Coffee on the way to Zenkoji. Chill place, decent Americano.
* For lunch, I had really good soba at [Daimaru / 大丸](https://tabelog.com/nagano/A2001/A200101/20000487/), near Zenkoji. It was shinshu soba (信州そば), which is 80% soba/20% flour, using newly harvested buckwheat. Nice chew, and sweeter-tasting noodles and tsuyu than I’ve had elsewhere – Nagano foods and fruits actually tended to be a little sweeter tasting than what I’m used to from other places in Japan.
* For dinner, had miso ramen (also a Nagano specialty) at [Misoya](https://tabelog.com/nagano/A2001/A200101/20001391/), and then had some local wagyu and Nagano red wine at a restaurant whose name I forget. Everything was pretty good.
* I stayed at the Hotel Abest Nagano Station. It was slim pickings since I booked on such short notice – it was a serviceable hotel but was rather old and rundown, like the enameling on my bathroom sink was peeling and the hotel still used physical keys for rooms. I’d say it was the ‘worst’ hotel I’ve ever stayed in anywhere in Japan.
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## Day 2 – Saturday/October 29 – Nagano -> Niigata
I caught an early morning train (about 7 AM) from Nagano to Takasaki, and then transferred to the Joetsu Shinkansen to Niigata. Overall time was about 3 hours since I had to wait about 40 minutes for the train at Takasaki, so I used that time to eat breakfast and look at the omiyage store inside the train station. And they have a big statue of [Gunma-chan and a Daruma](https://i.imgur.com/TmTKsbm.jpg) inside the Shinkansen gates. The train to Niigata was completely full.
### Niigata (the city)
Just like with Nagano, Niigata is not a city that I expect many visitors normally stay in, because most of the attractions are about an hour or more outside of the city.
The city itself is quite nice, it’s not super crowded, and it was a pleasant place to walk around. I hit up the Bandai shopping district, walked [across the river](https://i.imgur.com/P09rpTC.png), walked around Furumachi, and just ventured around the city since I was time-constrained by the concert. There was a local food festival being held in the Bandai shopping area (in a shopping mall), though I was unfortunately not hungry enough to eat anything at that time.
One thing I noticed was the city was quite lacking in English – maybe I didn’t look for it but wherever I went and whoever I spoke to, I had to use far more of my Japanese than I normally do.
### Ponshukan
website: https://www.ponshukan.com/
Niigata prefecture produces the most rice in Japan, and they also have the highest number of sake brewers in the country. The Ponshukan is a giant store that sells hundreds of different types of sake, and they have this great tasting area with 100+ different sake from various brewers in the prefecture available to taste. You paid 500 yen for 5 tokens, and you got a little cup you could [put into a machine and get a sip of wine](https://i.imgur.com/PFtX3lR.jpg). Had some really interesting sake like the ones in the picture.
There are multiple Ponshukan, but I went to the one located in Niigata station.
### Polkadot Stingray Concert (FM Niigata Lots live house)
[Inside the concert hall](https://i.imgur.com/ehpea7O.png)!
I actually didn’t have a ticket for this concert – buying the concert ticket ahead of time required a Japanese phone number because the ticket was digitally issued, but I knew they would have a small number of same-day tickets. What I didn’t know was that even though the doors opened at 5 PM, they wouldn’t do same-day tickets until all ticket holders were let in. There were 350 ticket holders total (the show was sold out), and it took about 50 minutes for them to get everyone in because each ticket was numbered 1 to 350, and people were called up in order.
The concert was fantastic – even though I was one of the last people into the live house, it was still just 360 or so people with the same-day ticket holders, and I was about 30 feet from the stage – the view and audio setup were great. I love Japanese concerts like this because it was a two-hour show with just the band (no openers), and everything started on time.
### Hotel and Eats
* Coffee – I had some really good coffee and baked goods at dAb Coffee Store. Was actually quite surprising.
* Food – I ate a lot of the local noodle specialty: hegi soba. Very good chew – they apparently put ground seaweed into the noodle so they have a greenish hue. I ate at the two locations of [Kojimaya](https://tabelog.com/niigata/A1504/A150403/15000179/).
* Sake – had a lot of sake. Had a lot of Hakkaisan, and tasted multiple things at Ponshukan.
* Hotel – I stayed at the Hotel JR Mets, which is in Niigata Station. I really liked this hotel, it had nice rooms, and was directly connected to the Ponshukan. The staff here actually didn’t speak any English so I had to use Japanese for everything.
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## Day 3 – Sunday/October 30 – Yahiko
Yahiko is a village about an hour away from Niigata city, famous for onsen and a giant shrine complex.
### Getting There
I’m pointing this out specifically because getting to Yahiko by train was funny. When I told my wife I was going to take the day trip there, she texted me and said “Isn’t that really far from Niigata?” and Google Maps told me “2.5 hours” from Niigata City.
So I took the Shinkansen from Niigata to Tsubamesanjo (only an infrequent local Shinkansen goes here so I had to time that). Once at Tsubamesanjo, you have to switch to the Yahiko Line, and there was a train waiting at the platform so I quickly got on it and 10 minutes later, I was at Kita Sanjo…which is in the opposite direction.
I got off the train and noticed that the entire train line is a single track, and one train goes back and forth the entire line. I asked the station master when the next train to Yahiko was, and he told me it was 12:13 PM, over an hour away.
The area around Kita Sanjo has a metallurgy museum, as the town is one of the leading iron works in Japan.
### Yahiko (for real)
It took about 40 minutes to get to Yahiko Station, which [is designed to look like a shrine](https://i.imgur.com/p1CRw4L.jpg).
It was reminiscent of other small villages/onsen town – basically some main roads and a lot of places selling local souvenirs, like “onsen manjuu” (red bean buns made with spring water).
### Yahiko Shrine
Getting to the shrine involves walking through a large park, which was pretty crowded as many tourists were there on day trips like I was.
The shrine itself was lovely, with the [picturesque entrance](https://i.imgur.com/X8Q9YTv.jpg), and it was celebrating the [first rice harvest of the season](https://i.imgur.com/a5CcpcK.jpeg), which included displaying things like [various chrysanthemum](https://i.imgur.com/nSp4e4R.jpeg).
The shrine was also extremely busy and crowded from all the day trippers and also because many people were bringing their children to celebrate Shichigosan (7-5-3).
One of the funnier things I saw (and did) was the “rock lifting.” Near one of the shrine entrances there was a line of people waiting to [lift rocks](https://i.imgur.com/AJJALpX.jpg) (rocks aren’t pictured). Basically, there were two rocks – one heavy, one light, and people took turns lifting each one for luck. Most people could not lift the heavy rock, and even a decent number couldn’t lift the light rock. The light rock was about 15-20 pounds, the heavy rock was probably 30-40 pounds, but some people were really struggling with these.
### Return to Ueno
I got back to Tsubamesanjo around 5:30 PM and took the Joetsu Shinkansen back to Ueno, which was also almost completely full.
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## Summary and Dumb Stats
I did really enjoy my time in both cities and will be back. One of the things I didn’t do was eat blueberry pizza, a weird specialty in some far off restaurant of Nagano that one of my friends keeps urging me to go to (she typically spends her summers in Nagano).
* Total Shinkansen Fares (without JR East Pass): 32810 yen
* Soba eaten: 1.5 kg
* Sake drank: Not Enough
* Number of Shinkansen reservations canceled: 2 (I changed my return time to Ueno multiple times)