In case anyone was/is interested in going to the Togakushi Village Soba Festival, the information is here:

http://www.icon.pref.nagano.jp/usr/to ... /+soba2004/eve/index.html

http://togakushi-21.jp

I'll be at the Krispy Kreme festival myself, smeared in key-lime flavoured goo and doing an interpretive dance portraying the rise and fall of their stock price over the last three years.

Thanks, though. Slurp some cold soba for me!

We made our annual dojo trip to Togakushi this past weekend. The soba festival wasn't happening while we were there, but that didn't stop us from having a great time and chowing down on some soba anyway - great after a full day of hiking!!

Jeremy has some pics up here:
>> Diamond Joe <<

Mine aren't up yet, but will be on the Gurei Dojo website soon.

Cheers,

Shawn

*gasp!* OMG those pictures from the hike are beautiful! I'll have to put that on my list of things to do in my life. Where is this place, exactly? I am just mystified by that view, especially the one view from below... Wow...

So you climbed the bastard Shawn !!
How hard is it? When I got up as far as the shrine I saw a group of four Japanese heading off to climb it but they were decked out in some pretty serious climbing gear so I assumed that it was a climb for professionals only.

Togakushi soba is pretty well known in Japan. I have seen quite a few "Togakushi Soba" places at the restaraunt level of department stores.

The place I ate at in Togakushi was called "Gokui Soba" from memory ... the shop was about 500 years old.

The trouble is that I'm not a big fan of soba (nothing like Kansai Udon) and I found there to be little else decent to eat up there.