Last week Bep & Hans van Ginkel invited me to joint hem and a guest of theirs for a day trip. They have been living in Tokyo for the past 9 years and I know them via my grandmother. This is how I ended up in the Japanese Alps last sunday.



It took us something like 5 hours by car to get there, excluding some stops for shopping, having luch and of course taking pictures of the wide open spaces and green or snowy hills that you won't find near Tokyo.


It was a very sunny day, but outside the city the weather was really pleasant (not too humid that is)


In the countryside there were many (small) rice fields. Sometimes just in between some houses, but also at some places that offered a better photo opportunity




Actually we wanted to drive to some mountain top, but halfway the road was closed and the only possibility was to take a ropeway (walking to the top was not an option for the others and would have taken way to much time). At the end of the ropeway there was another lift which took us to a panoramic viewpoint. We walked a bit through te snow and enjoyed the mountains.


The full 360 degrees panorama looked like this, but way bigger of course ;-) maybe you have to save it to your harddisk and zoom in a bit to get a grasp of the feeling.


Time to go home :-(