I took the train to Matsumoto, about an hour south of Nagano. On the train, I leaned over to the woman sitting across from me in the aisle and said in Japanese “Um, excuse me but my Japanese is very good.” She laughed and said her English is better. She was from Vietnam, it turned out. To explain the layers of humor a bit, she might have for a split second thought here’s another Japanese assuming I’m Japanese. Also, in Japan, it’s rather cringe to brag or boast about yourself. Finally, my Japanese is not very good, and I think that’s fairly obvious.

She said she’s here to see snow. I inquired further and she said she likes to eat snow. I said she should write reviews of where the tastiest snow can be found in Japan. We saw some snow capped mountains and I said The snow up there looks tasty, eh?

In Matsumoto, I got some CoCo curry. I asked for enough curry to sustain me through the shop’s entire collection of One Piece comics.

I got to page 3.

There was a street with loads of frogs.

Finally made my way to the castle. There was a stand at the entrance to the castle park where I met with who would be my volunteer guide, an elder denizen of Matsumoto. He explained that in the Edo period, the castle extended out from the castle building in 3 successive, moat and wall-secured layers. Beyond the outer layer lived the regular folks of Matsumoto, farmers and craftspeople, as well as some low ranking samurai. The first layer was the exclusive domain of lords and high ranking samurai. The second layer was purely defensive. Beyond that was the interior of the castle which held the castle building (pictured below) the palace, stores of grain and ammunition, and administrative offices. The lord did not normally hang out in the castle building, a defensive structure full of turrets for muskets and arrows, preferring instead his palace. If the lord was in the castle, it was probably because he expected defeat and was preparing to commit seppuku.

My guide was excited to tell me about the moon viewing room, the adjoining room on the right with red paint. The lord of Matsumoto had it built to invite the shogun over for a moon viewing party, but for some reason, the shogun couldn’t make it. The party went ahead anyway. It was said that you could view three moons: The actual moon in the sky, the reflection in the moat, and the reflection in the cup of sake. If you drank enough sake, you would see stars, too. Sounds like a great party! I also got to see the creaking polished wooden interior of the castle and climb up the extremely steep stars from floor to floor and check out their collection of old Japanese firearms. Photos were prohibited so you’ll have to use your imagination.

I was at a bar with an automatic door that kept opening on its own. The bartender and I were joking about it being a ghost. Only she didn’t know the word ghost so I drew a ghost in my notebook. She used a long Japanese word that I wish I remembered, but it basically seemed like a name of a ghost like-entity from Japanese folklore.