And so the spring vacation is upon us, well, upon those of us lazy-arsed tosseurs who eke out a living as itinerant mystical sages in the Land of the Four Clearly-Defined Seasons. Yes, I am currently eschewing all things pedagogical and devoting myself entirely to the noble and nourishing pursuit of doing fuck-nothing until early April. Huzzah!

In keeping with last year I have consulted my financial guru and he has observed the birds in the sky, the tea-leaves in the cup and the configuration of a virgin’s intestines and tells me that I should forgo travel to foreign parts and instead take up my cane and sack and once more take the long road to somewhere domestic. He assures me this will save me at least £5, and so it is that on March 10th I will head north for a couple of weeks in the hitherto unexplored Chubu region of these here lands. When I say unexplored, dear reader, I mean unexplored with regard to my own feet, arse and lungs. Obviously a few other people have already been there, otherwise how are we to account for the vast number of beverage vending machines to be found there?

Now Chubu in Japanese breaks down into two Chinese characters, “Chu”, meaning ‘middle’, and “Bu”, meaning ‘bit’. Hence if we were to glance at a map of old Nippon, it would be after being that mountainous chunk in the centre between the two great urban slabs of Kansai (Osaka & Kyoto) and Kanto (Tokyo & Yokohama):

Well, I’m all agog with excitement, and have already planned out the trip in true nerdy fashion, with multiple copies of itineraries depicting schedules and timings, together with inventories detailing exact numbers of socks to be transported and where said foot-coverings are to be stowed once used and a-smellied.

Here’s the basic plan:

[1] Kanazawa - 3 nights. Old bits and gardeny things to gawp at. Possible side trip to venerable Eiheiji Temple if no Starbucks found.
[2] Takayama - 3 nights. Snowy mountains, olde worlde charm, cold turkey due to lack of Starbucks.
[3] Nagoya - 2 nights. A counterblast to the previous rusticity. Go to Starbucks. Look at big ugly city nobody likes.
[4] Matsumoto - 3 nights. More snowy mountains, old bits and a castle. Starbucks.
[5] Nagano - 3 nights. Snowy mountains, Starbucks.

A splendid plan indeed!

Hotels have been booked, railway timetables consulted - it’s all looking rather wonderful!

And as a tantalising taster of the visual delights that await, I do hereby solemnly reproduce here a nice photo of Matsumoto castle what I nicked off some other bugger’s site: