When we decided to go to Japan, I asked (myself), can we go to Matsumoto? This is where Shinichi Suzuki had his school, this is where he lived when he pioneered the Suzuki method, a method, a philosophy really, of teaching children to play music by using music in the same way that a child learns his native language. This is the method I learned violin through, and it greatly informs how I teach the violin. One thing that turned music teaching upside down was Dr. Suzuki’s idea that all children had the capacity to learn music, and that they should start very young, during the years when language was still being acquired.

I grew up listening to recordings of all the music I was learning and going to learn in the next year or so. I listened constantly! My mother attended lessons with me, and she practiced with me when I was younger. We attended “institutes” in the summer to play with other students (we didn’t have the group classes that are a big part of the method after my first year or two just due to circumstances) and to learn from other teachers. It was a lot of fun (not always, with practicing) playing the violin, especially playing with others!

SO! Matsumoto had always been in the back of my head as a magical village where Suzuki taught everybody to play the violin. I started looking on the map as I started planning this trip, and then I saw you could do these walking tours on the Nakasendo Trail and end in Matsumoto! Though we didn’t technically walk to Matsumoto, we just took a very short train. Oh, and Matsumoto is a mid-size city, not a village. Was it a village before? Probably it was much smaller, and I’m sure it was magical.

• Nagoya: Not boring at all
• Starting off in Tokyo
• Off to Kyoto on a very fast train!
• Takayama for a few days
• One Night in Inuyama
• Walking Tour Day 1: Mitake to Hosokute
• Walking Tour Day 2: Hosokute to Ena
• Walking Tour Day 3: Ochiai to Tsumago
• Walking Tour Day 4: Tsumago to Nojiri
• Walking Tour Day 5: Yabuhara to Narai

We left off in Narai, at the end of a 5 day walking tour. We caught the train to Matsumoto and walked about ten minutes with our luggage (oh, so sad, no more luggage transfers included!) to Hotel Onyado Nono Matsumoto, which had actually been recommended by my friend Stephanie. It was a bustling place, with lockers for your shoes and a mat to put your luggage on to have it cleaned off. We checked in and got unpacked, and our first step was to clean up and hit the onsen!

Our room had a nice view, and it was very comfortable. We grabbed our things and our robes and went upstairs to our respective onsens. Mine was very nice, with an indoor and an outdoor pool, which I tried both.

After getting cleaned up and relaxing, it was time to seek out dinner. It was raining a bit, off and on, and I didn’t want to walk far.

Louie found an Izakaya called Furinkazen just a few minutes walk from the hotel with excellent tablelog ratings. As soon as we walked in, they said “no English menu!” We said, that’s fine, we will manage. They looked doubtful, but really, we aren’t that picky, and we figured we would use a translator app to help us.

Sitting at the counter of the Izakaya (a sort of Japanese pub).

Well, this was the menu. Not as helpful for a translator app, but very lovely! One of the workers came over to try to help us, and he spoke English well enough. We basically asked his opinions, and tried to explain we just wanted a variety of dishes, and didn’t care too much! But no horse. There was a horse pictured and neither of us wanted to eat horse.

Look, we got the egg from the picture!

I don’t remember what we ordered, and looking at pictures it’s still unclear. Egg with greens, fish, all kinds of delicious stuff.

And then we had asked for some vegetables, wanting to make sure we had a balanced meal. We asked what he thought was good. Well, they brought out this radish and greens dishes. Raw.

I honestly thought maybe they were just messing with us, because it was so weird! Louie and I ate it, dipping the radishes in the sauce, because we figured the roughage was a good thing. I don’t know though, was this a real dish?

Anyway, we had a lovely evening, and then went back to hotel and slept very well in the lovely bed.

Day 2 of Matsumoto:

We woke up and went downstairs for breakfast. Stephanie had said they had a great breakfast, and she was correct. It was a giant buffet with many stations of delicious looking food. It was hard to stop filling our plates!

Then we had to pack up and store our bags, since we had a train later in the day. But first, much sightseeing!

This was some of the most blatant law breaking we saw in Japan.

We walked along the river a bit heading towards the historic part of town.

This area was called Frog Street.

Nakamachi street: such a beautiful street with old white buildings!

Japan is known for its vending machines. This was a pizza vending machine!

Louie needed little rest so he had a seat.

We walked over to Matsumoto Castle, one of the 12 original castles left in Japan. We just walked around the outside.

It was surrounded by water, as a good castle should be, and it was beautiful and dark.

Our next stop was the Suzuki Memorial Hall, which was a museum in the house where he lived. It was a 15-20 minute walk along a busy road, but it was sort of interesting.

We got a private tour of the house: there was one man working there and he gave us a private tour. It was very nice to see everything! You took your shoes off, of course, and put on slippers that were pretty small for my feet.

This was Dr. Suzuki’s work room where he listened to all the graduation tapes students from around the world would send him.

I was there!

I believe this was in his handwriting. These are some songs that he wrote for the first volume of pieces, and if you stop by my house in the afternoons, you’ll hear my students playing them.

There was also a large living room area filled with recordings and pictures. We listened to a recording of Ave Maria that inspired Suzuki to become a violinist! Louie didn’t know much about him at all so he found it quite fascinating to learn about the method and the man. He thought it was quite interesting that Suzuki himself learned the violin starting as a teenager yet dedicated his life to teaching young children to play.

It was a wonderful visit to the house, and I was happy to be there. I had reached out to the local Suzuki school about visiting, but they were on vacation while we were there.

After that, lunch! We took a cab back to the main area of town, and found an amazing soba place, Marushu. It was a little busy when we arrived so they had us wait outside until they were ready.

We sat at the bar and really enjoyed our lunches.

We had a little more time then, so we just wandered around heading towards the direction of the hotel.

We had a ticket to Tokyo leaving around 3:30 or so: we ended up with sort of a short connection in Nagano, and then the train seemed to be running a little behind so we were a bit stressed out about catching the next one. It ended up being just fine, but I would say to people: if you want to be less stressed, choose a longer connection when possible.

I got a picture of the Shinkansen train arriving at the station in Nagano. By the way, the train ride was absolutely beautiful from Matsumoto to Nagano and then for the first part to Tokyo: the mountains! We would love to go back and explore that area more as well.

Pictures from the train window aren’t the best, but you can see there are mountains.

We got to Ueno station and then took a subway to Asakusa and walked about 8 minutes to our hotel for the remainder of the trip, Sake Bar Hotel Asakusa.

Two beds, something we were pretty accustomed to, haha. This is considered a nicer room than a room with one bed.

A large tub as well as a Japanese style shower. This place didn’t have public onsens, just one you could reserve and use once for free. What it did have was free sake to drink and a foot bath on the roof.

We got some laundry going in the hotel’s machine and then went out in search of food. We settled on a nearby ramen restaurant with very high tablelog ratings. Noriaki Bibi Aged Miso Ramen Asakusa, which was right around the corner from our hotel.

You ordered from a machine and then got a little ticket that you’d hand to the counter.

They asked if I wanted a bib and I looked around and saw many people were using them, so I said YES. They only offered one additional raw egg unlike a previous place where there were unlimited. (One is enough for me). This ramen was really delicious!

Yummy! After dinner we wandered around the area a bit more, just to stretch our legs.

And then back up to the rooftop foot baths. It looks like it was even a little chilly!

Tomorrow will be more exploring, and I’ll leave us there for now. We will see how soon I can get back to telling you more about Tokyo 🙂