Nagano and the Midori Fault Museam

So, after MG Lab we moved to Nagano from whereI was meant to head, by myself, to a fault museam in the middle of the country side where a M7 earthquake hit the Midori valley in 1891.

Walking through Nagano on the way to the train station, there was this weird building; which I had glimpsed on the way to the hotel the night before, which has a ferris wheel tacked on to the side.

On the way to Midori, I stopped off at Oogaki, where I was meant to change trains to get to the fault museam...and after missing a train (which has a very strainge timetable...with a train about once every1.5hrs at best) due to some confusion over where the platform was hiding, I went for a little wonder around Oogaki...and found a reconstructed castle.

Then finally got my train (along with a little sushi lunch) on a pink, one-carriaged train. stylish.

The trip down took about an hour through the Japanese country side on a single track in very heavy rain.

The Midori (水鳥) train station was tiny, but it was hard to miss the fault museum, which sat, just by the train line...a huge pyramid in the middle of the otherwise tranquil country side.

I was the ONLY person in the museum, apart from the two people who were looking after the place. After playing around with all the buttons in the museum, I went for a walk in the rain to photograph what was left of the fault. I got completely soaked from the knees down...

Before catching the train back, I stopped off at a tiny little cafe, sitting behind the fault museum, and attempted to speak japanese to the people inside. The lady who ran the place was lovely, and somewhat confused that she couldn't find me any cakes to have with my coffee which I wasn't allergic to...it was really sweet, she came back 3 times to me with a different cake... and I felt really bad rejecting them.

I then trapsed back to the little train station to wait for my train back so that i could try and catch the shinkansen [新幹線] home.