Alright, so that's done. I then go down to Shinjuku station again on the subway and go to the bus terminal to buy a ticket to Hakuba up in Nagano. They tell me the next bus is for 3:30 in the afternoon. Alright, that's cool, so I ask if there is anything earlier and to no avail there isn't. I don't think they understood me (which there was a lot of this on this trip). So I have like 4 hours to kill. What to do? So, I remembered in my hotel they said that Tokyo Tower is something neat to see. It's like the eiffel tower in form, but taller (actually the tallest of it's kind). So I find how to get there on subway and go. I get there, pay the admission fee and go up the elevator to 150 meters. I get off and see the view. Wow, what a view of the city. I saw the city last night but not in the daytime. It's a huge city as you can see in the pictures below. Then I take another elevator up to a special observation deck at 250 meters. From here, just about everything is visible. It's amazing. Then I decide to explore more around the tower and find a gift shop area and get some japanese looking things for my apartment.
After this, I decided to go back to Shinjuku station and have some lunch. At places in japan they have machines where they have pictures of all their meals and you put in your money and it prints out a ticket and then you give the ticket to them and they give you your meal. So I did this at the one place and had a good meal.
Then I went to the bus terminal and waited for an hour for my bus to leave. I then get on the bus and start my trip up to Hakuba. The bus was quite comfortable and stopped at two rest stops on the way. The trip up there was beautiful and the mountains start about 45 minutes out of the city. It got dark half way through the trip though so I had no idea what kind of mountains I would find in Hakuba. There was snow on the ground though when we got closer to Hakuba and this got me excited.
So, I was on the bus, but I had no idea how to get to the place I was staying once I got there. That's fine, I thought. I can find it myself. So the bus stops, and I get out and start looking around. I have no idea where to start. So then this guy comes up to me and it like "Hey, where are you staying?". I'm like Hakuba Powder Lodging. He says "there is no way you are walking there yourself, I just called a taxi, you can come with me." So I'm like "sure, thanks." We get in the taxi and he tells me he is part owner of the place Snow Beds and that he knows the owner of the place that I'm staying at. So the taxi drops me off, and he pays for the taxi. This was an amazing blessing from God. Because there is no way I would've found this place. So I go inside my place and there are a bunch of people there already. It's a backpacker Hostel pretty much.
So, I check in and meet some of the people. There were people there from Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Finland. Most of them had been there for at least a week and the one guy in my room had been there for 2 months already. Nice people. That evening it was fun talking to them and the one guy there from Japan came to this place because he wants to learn english. So we talked some english with him. He was good for only have studied it for a month. Also, from the stories, some of these guys were true skiing pros. They were talking about hiking up to the tops of these mountains and making their own runs.
Anyway, that was the end of day 2. Tomorrow I would go skiing and that had me excited. Pictures below. It's a slideshow. If you want to see them individually, click on the link at the bottom of the slideshow.
Tokyo from Tokyo Tower
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