Today we needed to transit from Kamisuwa to Toyama through the Nagano countryside. It started out looking like midsummer in Kamisuwa… but was not to last. I had a feeling this gorgeous weather wasn’t going to last and it turned out I was absolutely right.

Ah, first point of business for the day was finding a Japan Post Office so Mr K could diligently march in and pay his traffic infringement from the weekend. We thought this might have been tricker than we thought – but the JPO is everywhere… only d difficulty proved not having a Japanese address! 😛 Fine paid… cheapest crazy travel story ever. Me in the car: “There’s some snow on those mountains; I bet it’s chilly up there.” #famouslastwordsWe have noticed that Sondora shows us the topographical /literal map of things and sometimes it looks like spaghetti junction, and no sooner does that happen than you get on a highway and it turns into a graphic representation of the destinations rather than a literal visual description (*think of a London Tube map compared to the A-Z).

We passed some beautiful vistas which featured steep cliffs, glacial waters and autumnal foliages. And then suddenly, it was fucking snowing! Mr K says he saw a monkey run across the road in front of us – but I think he was pulling my leg and just wanted to have one up on me. Beautiful!We noted that Sondara was showing some pretty spaghetti/worm like road maps coming up – just what you need when it is unseasonably and unexpectably snowing on what you thought might be a fairly uneventful drive. Then we came out of a tunnel and we were up in the mountains and it was a winter wonderland! OMG – so beautiful. I haven’t seen such gorgeous scenes since we did Christmas in Canada in 2017.It was just so beautiful… We stopped at a Okuhida Onsengo Kamitakara restop which had these weasels everywhere as a mascot – and we expected to find it full of weird Japanese weasel mascots and of course, fried chicken… instead we found :

An amazing display of sake from local breweries! Oh what a shame – I so totally wanted a weasel keychain, and instead walked our with four bottles of saké. Best fails ever. As quickly as we entered into the snowy altitudes we were returned to the autumnal glacial alluvial valleys again. We eventually made our way to the Dormy Inn in Toyama City – which I guess is like an American Holiday Inn or an Australian Rydges… there wasn’t much happening here by the time we arrived quite late in the day, but we did find an nice izakaya open and managed to have a nice fishy dinner. Below: miso crap, sashimi plate (salmon, snapper and yellowtail) and some sea cucumber).