Aokijimamachi-Aokijima 4 Stars Hotels

"The breakfast buffet was extravaganza! I never seen that much extent of options and they were top notch! It is a big hotel so they had to limit time so we got busy exploring different items. We did not have dinner there but I wonder what it would have been like. We went out to a local mom and pop bar. The immediate area did not seem to have many options for eating out though. The hot spring bath was nice. We enjoyed going between inside and olhalf-outside baths. We didn't do this but saw used the sauna and cold bath. The view from the room was wonderful, looking at snow-capped mountain ridges. The only con is that we were a family of 5 and had to get separated into two rooms. It would have been nice to stay together in one room with five futons. Maybe they were out of bigger rooms when we booked? The location was good for a car access. It is away from the city center of Nagano so if you travel by train, a taxi ride would be needed. But we were pleasantly surprised by what this Matsushiro area had to offer. After checking out we drove a few minutes to the Matsushiro historic residential area, parked, strolled the old Shinto shrine and Buddhist temples. Then we toured into the enormous cave that Imperial Japan dug near the end of WWII to move the headquarter from Tokyo. They never actually moved, but they preserved the cave as a historic site. big military "