We woke up early to a snow-dusted Nagano City as we wanted to get a good start on our hour drive to one of the places I was most looking forward to on our winter trip. Before heading off we had a walk around Nagano and found a series of very intriguing statues along the main road! I never expected to see a metal hippo or giraffe on this trip.

The back streets of Nagano City had some lovely old-looking buildings, with giant paper lanterns out front, and I enjoyed being in the snow again after the hot weather in Tokyo. Our reason for staying so far north in Nagano was to visit a stunning shrine in the mountains, Togakushi Shrine, which is roughly an hour’s drive from the city. This was our first time trying the new rental car in the snow, and although we had winter tyres the Tokyo branch didn’t offer 4-wheel drive options. The drive was absolutely fine until we got halfway up the mountain on a series of switchbacks and the car started skidding and lost power. It was a terrifying drive to the shrine, and at times we almost completely stopped due to loss of power. Instead of helping, we were being overtaken on snowy mountain roads, I was not happy! So my number one recommendation is to *always* get the 4-wheel drive and winter tyres if you are planning to drive on any snow!

Thankful to not be dead we suited up for a very snowy hike, for some inexplicable reason we decided to leave our crampons in the car… we will regret this later! Snow boots, gators and waterproofs on we headed off from the car park and found ourselves at a stunning wooden torii leading into a winter wonderland. Togakushi Shrine is a rather famous shrine thanks to the mythology behind it. It is said that the Sun Goddess hid in a cave after her brother misbehaved, which caused the world to be in darkness.

To try and get sunlight back to the world the other deities tried to lure her out by dancing, intriuged by their performance the Goddess peeked out of the cave, and with the door ajar one of the deities tore the door off and threw it away. The door travelled all the way from Kyushu to Togakushi Shrine in Nagano. The upper shrine, which we are headed to, enshrines the deity that threw off the door. Our next stop was Zuishinmon Gate which was stunning in the snow. As we had arrived quite early, we had the gate to ourselves.

I’m not sure the photographs do it justice, but the cryptomeria trees lining the pathway to the upper shrine were absolutely enormous, staggeringly so. They towered above the path, and as the day warmed up they started raining snow down onto the pathway, such magic!

It was at this miniature shrine that our lack of crampons became a problem. We were often knee-deep in snow, with ice beneath, which made the uphill hike quite the challenge. This was the spot I fell for the first time haha. We were overtaken by other hikers wearing snow shoes or crampons, but we struggled on. We eventually made it up to the upper shrine, and I was stunned by the depth of the snow up there, the upper shrine was almost completely buried and as we were some of the first hikers up, there wasn’t much of a path through the snow.

The way back down was a little dicey at first, but soon levelled out and was enjoyable walking back through the towering trees. The snow was falling off the branches at quite a pace, which made it so beautiful. I was glad to have arrived so early, as by the time we were back to the gate there were many groups of people starting their hike, we were lucky to get the tree-lined paths almost to ourselves.

Before heading off to our final stop of the day, Takayama, I wanted to try out the drone in the snowy mountains. We found a layby and I got the drone up and the surrounding snowy trees and rivers were so beautiful.

We had an 174-mile journey to get to Takayama, and so decided to stop off in one of the most famous towns in Nagano, Matsumoto, home of the stunning Matsumoto castle. This isn’t our first time visiting Matsumoto-jo, we went back in 2017, but the winter blue sky and the bright sunshine made the black castle walls seem so bright.

After a lucky find of a yaki-imo van, we stocked up of sweet potatoes and got back in the car. There is no expressway between Matsumoto and Takayama and so we were on quite small mountain roads, which we named murder roads. The sun set behind the mountains, and with a lack of street lights the narrow roads and long tunnels appeared super creepy!

Things didn’t get massively better in Takayama, as our hotel didn’t have an adjoined car park it took a while to find somewhere and get to our room. We had a great deal on the hotel, I had booked early in 2022 for our 2023 trip and so had closed border prices, but the quality of the room made a lot of sense for the price. It was damp smelling and in great need of refurbishment. After a supermarket dinner, we went to bed, ready for another day on the road.