Nagano Cultural Weekend March 5-6

This weekend I went to Nagano with some people from work.
We had a fantastic time.
First, we saw some of the city of Nagano. The Special Olympics were just finishing so there were lots of foreigners around. We got a volunteer guide when we went to the temple (she was awesome). Thanks to her, I managed to find the key to enlightenment AND be re-born... all in the space of an hour!
We stayed at a hostel inside the first set of gates to the temple. It used to be acommodation for the monks at the temple and it was gorgeous. The landlady was great too. She even gave us warm sake and called the local restaurant to deliver dinner to us!
It did become a little bit tragic when, around 7:30pm, we had eaten dinner, consumed a number of bottles of wine and were ready for bed! We decided instead to play some games... what followed was a couple of hilarious hours of (gradually more substandard) charades and celebrity head.
On Sunday we were up at the "crack of sparrows" to wash our faces in the icy tap water (hot water was down stairs but it was 2 degrees down there) I stuck to the cold water in the 5 degree environment. Bags packed, we went back to the train station (along with some Estonian masseurs... sadly, all female) for breakfast (some of us nursing slight hang-overs) then on the bus up to near the Snow monkeys.
http://www.jigokudani-yaenkoen.co.jp/frameset.html
Check this website if you're interested. Not only does it have a "live webcam" (which seems to show one pic an hour) but it also has some of the most attrocious Engrish I've seen in a long time! But... the snow was beautiful and the monkeys were very cool!
A word to the wise... don't take any plastic bags! The monkeys associate that with food and they WILL attack (Saw it happen to an old lady Sunday morning). The lady was fine but her rice ball took a quick journey up the nearest tree, in the hands of a monkey.