For my last day in Nagano Prefecture I had set my sights on Kamikochi, known as one of the most scenic parts of the Japanese Alps. However, the night before I had pretty much given up all home. It had been raining heavily and it was so cloudy that you couldn’t really see the mountains around Matsumoto¹, much less those any higher up.

But the next morning things looked very different. It was a bright day, with a clear blue sky and a slight chill in the air — it was, after all, October. The forecast still wasn’t promising but I thought it was worth the risk.

This weeks PhotoFriday theme, “Dark,” was easier than some of those that they’ve come up with recently! This was taken from the top of Tokyo Tower last month.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Fluffy.” I’m entry number 187.

If you were to make a list of the foods that I won’t eat and then make a diet that consists almost entirely of them, you’d get pretty close to what I thought the Japanese ate.

As it happens, I was wrong. Or at least, there were plenty of options available for someone who won’t eat fish or pickles. But that’s not to say that there weren’t odd or interesting things.

This is already turning into a trip of contrasts. Tokyo was all rush and all people, all the time. Mount Fuji (or at least Lake Kawaguchiko) was quiet, with very few people and little noise except the occasional clank from the bike chain. Matsumoto, a city near the Japanese Alps, strikes a balance somewhere between the two.

The main feature, right in the centre of the city, is Matsumoto Castle. It’s one of the oldest and best preserved castles in Japan.

The Japanese, at least those in the big cities, clearly have a “work hard, play hard” mind-set. I can recount the stereotype of the salaryman carefully arriving at work before and leaving after his boss, or going for drinks with his colleagues at the expense of his family.

Of course I didn’t really see that. While they were working I was sight-seeing.

In the evenings I saw gangs of men in suits in bars. But really the defining factor was that everywhere you looked, no matter the time, there were people asleep. On tube trains. On benches in parks. On seats in exhibition centres.

Not sure why but this weeks PhotoFriday theme, “Fluffy,” was pretty hard. I thought of clouds. Of cotton wood (urgh). I don’t know, but none of that really worked for me. I’m not sure that a sheep fits the theme any better, but that’s what I’ve entered. This was taken on a trip this year to Stone Henge.

• Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity draws marchers from across America – Good to see that there is some sense in American politics!
• Some physics to live by… – “Whether we like it or not, human life is subject to the universal laws of physics.”

If there’s one thing that Japan is famous for it’s Mount Fuji¹, which, despite its name, is actually a volcano. That meant that it had to be on the itinerary when on my first trip to Japan.

In order to get the best view I went to Kawaguchiko, which sits between Kawaguchiko lake to its north and Fuji-san to its south. When I first arrived I couldn’t see the mountain as it was covered in mist. I quickly found the lake instead.

Tokyo really is a city of contrasts. Is it the high-tech, bustling, Bladerunner-esque landscape you see on TV? Absolutely. However not all of the districts are quite as frenetic as Ginza or Shibuya. If you look hard there are also back-waters of serenity in some of the temples.

Straight off the plane I decided to lean more towards the quiet side and went to the Imperial Palace. I went straight for the canonical picture of the palace, Nijubashi Bridge.

At the beginning of October I visited Japan for the first time. I landed in Tokyo, travelled out to Mount Fuji and then west to Nagano Prefecture, finally heading back to Tokyo via Kyoto and Nara. It was a lot to try to pack in to two weeks but it worked out pretty well all things considered.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be documenting in words and pictures my trip, focusing mainly on the locations but with odd entry about the things that seemed constant throughout my time there.