I finally make it to the Shinkansen, but I have no Idea where the fuck i'm supposed to go, i'm looking at the station route and a train attendant asks me where I'm heading, he informs me that my train is leaving in the next 50 seconds, I sprint through the station and make it just in time as the doors are closing, nearly crushing my pack as I make it through.
Naturally by the time I get situated i'm starving so I use this as an excuse to by one of everything the food cart had.
Not gonna lie, it was pretty gross.
I caught a quick 45 min nap and got off in Nagano for my connecting train into the mountains.
It was a premium train car that I was essentially alone on, it was also FREEZING, which was a oddity since when I left Tokyo it was pouring rain and over 100*
The train was older and had been converted at some point in its history to run on the newer train system, but was spotless, like everything else in Japan
However, when I got to Matsumoto the weather was perfect. It was a nice change of pace to sweating my balls off.
Little history about Matsumoto castle, it is the only 100% original castle in Japan, due to the war the US went about targeting castles on bombing runs since the Japanese didn't give a shit about human casualties. US forces notified Japanese forces that they were going to destroy Matsumoto castle, Japan offered the US whatever the wanted to preserve it, we were able to free many of our POW's in a trade for not destroying it. It was also the only castle in it's feudal history that was never successfully take over or burned to the ground. It is also black, where all other castles were a bright color.
