Japan Alps, Gassho Villages and Gardens.- with JR Pass.

Spring of 2015. A new convenient shinkansen connecting Tokyo to Kanazawa in just 3 hours enabled us to make this trip to the Unesco Heritage Gassho villages of Gokayama and Shirakawago. End April was the openingt of the snow corridor (Yuki-no Otani) in Murado_ along the popular Tateyama-Kurobe Alpine Route involving 6 different types of transportation across the Japan Alps. Matsumoto Castle, in Matsumoto city in Nagano Prefecture, is among Japan's oldest and most beautiful castles and along with Hikone Castle, Himeji Castle and Inuyama Castle, is designated as a National Treasure. Matsumoto Castle is one of Japan's only twelve completely original castles Kusatsu Onsen town was chosen as it was voted the top onsen resort in Japan. There is symbolic facility called Yubatake (Hot water field) in the town centre which is one of the resort’s main sources of hot spring water. The water at 90 deg C is cooled by paddles manually. Spring was the cherry blossom season. Although we were late for the yustino cherry blossoms , we saw other blossoms and we lucky to see the wisteris in full bloom. The shibazakura or pink phlox was only 50 percent bloomed but enough to give us some spectacular pictures with Mount Fuji in the background.