Our hotel had a free shuttle to the airport so we decided to check out early and get to the airport at around 7:30am so we could get breakfast, snacks (and of course I found a stationery store and obviously I bought the choc-vanilla chupa chup scented pen) and fluff around for a bit.
We fluffed around for a bit and then as our departure time approached things started to get a bit stressful! First we were having trouble finding our bus stop - turns out we were on the wrong floor, who knew floors applied to outside the building too! We found our stop but the bus there didn't look right. On the website it was bright purple with Nagano Snow Shuttle plastered on the side, but the bus at the stop was more of a plum colour with some other name on the side. 9am was looming and the Japanese are known for their punctuality.
I ran (jogged) through terminal two to the Nagano Snow Shuttle counter (all the way at the other end!) and it was lucky I did because it turns out they had to give me a ticket/receipt and stickers for our luggage. I jogged back to our stop (the man at the counter confirmed it was the right one) but the purple bus still wasn't there.
There were some people milling around the plum bus, one being a Kiwi guy who seemed to realise we were looking a little frazzled. Turns out he spoke Japanese and was able to confirm that the plum bus was actually the one we needed. We quickly had our luggage loaded and boarded the bus and took our seat. Luckily we weren't the last to board and it was nearly half an hour before everyone was boarded and we were ready to go.
It was a coach, but the seats were still a bit small. Someone moved to the seat in front of us and kept leaning back and squishing Daniel's knees :(
The views from the bus were really interesting. At first it seemed like the suburbs of Tokyo went on forever. Eventually we had our first rest stop and we got our first sight of Japanese vending machines in full swing. I even tried a Japanese style toilet - for the record, I didn't find it too bad.
After the rest stop, the scenery started getting more mountainy with the odd sight of Mt Fuji would flash by the window. Before long, we started seeing a spattering of snow here and there beside the road and it started getting thicker and thicker until we got to Nagano and changed buses.
Once we were on the second smaller bus, things started getting even more mountainy and villagey. Rural Japan is beautiful! We hadn't really had much interaction with any Japanese people, but we were already madly in love with this country! 100
Eventually the village of Nozawa Onsen was in sight and it was stunning! The bus pulled up at the local terminal (more like a small parking lot) and then we had to figure out how to get to our hotel. I was unable to get a wifi signal to look anything up on Google Maps but then the driver offered to call our accommodation. Within a few minutes (and after purchasing the most tasty corn soup we've ever had - in a can, from a vending machine, served hot and only ¥100!) the owner had showed up and took us to our accommodation, which turned out to be just around the corner.
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