Hakuba for Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving early this year because we planned a trip to Hakuba. We did the whole Turkey dinner on the Sunday before. We got to share the meal with our good friends the Erwins and Walkers. Always fun to eat yummy food and hang out with friends. Then we headed to Hakuba with the Erwins. We started off the trip by stopping at Byakue Dai Kannon. We explored there and bought some souvenirs.

After we made a stop at a kokeshi doll factory. It was a really cool experience as we could watch them making the kokeshi dolls (and of course I love colecting them so we bought a couple). They also had a museum of antique kokeshis and artistic ones. So glad we made this extra stop.

Then we headed to a firework festival in Nagano. It started out with a drone show from Disney Tokyo which was so cool. I had never see a drone show before and it was fun to see different Disney characters. The actual firework show was a little bit slow. I guess since it was a festival they wanted to make it last so they had frequent breaks and long announcements between firework demonstrations. So we stayed for a bit and then headed for our airbnb in Hakuba. As we drove closer to Hakuba we were surprised to see some snow on the ground.

The next day we headed down to Matsumodo. We took a tour of the samuri castle and saw the views from the top. After we went to a really yummy pizza place that even had an apple honey pizza. Then we got yummy ice cream with flavors like sweet potato, mango, and more.

After we took the kids to play at a big playground in the Matsumoto Alps Park. The playground had zipline like toys, a HUGE climbing wall, long roller slides, and even a waterbed thing. Needless to say the kids had a blast playing, we saw some amazing Mountain views and saw some fall colors. After we grabbed some yummy ramen for dinner and hit up a few Hard offs.

Overnight we got some more snow so we decided to go see the Olympic Ski Jump. We found out that we could throw snowballs down the jump and watch to see how far they slid or jumped. Uncle Mark had the best one. After we warmed up with some hot cocoa at Starbucks and then headed to see the river at Oide Park. We meant to hike, but the trail was closed off. For lunch we went to a fun cafe where they had games for the kids to play. In the afternoon we went to a small traditional onsen. It was the Jane's and the Erwin kids first time, so it was fun to go all together. It was so small that we could hear the boys over on the other side of the bamboo wall. We finished the day witha movie night at our airbnb, while snacking on local apples and 7-eleven treats.

On our trip home we checked out a small but impressive waterfall where the water came out in a trickles all along a crack in a cliff, so it had a unique effect. Then we stopped at a nearby town for a good lunch and even found some apple pie for dessert. Then we headed home from our adventure to sleep in our own comfy beds.