Matsumoto

Back in August when Fudge was out, after I had finished working for the week, he and I met up in Matsumoto. This small city is in the central mountains of Japan, near Nagano.
Matsumoto is famous throughout Japan for its castle, which is considered by many Japanese to be more beautiful than its more famous counterpart near me, Himeji Castle.
Our plan was to check out the city and the castle, and then blast down to Fuji to climb the mountain, which I discussed in an earlier post.
The castle is by far the biggest tourist draw here, but Fudge also showed me Frog Alley, which is a short little alley with a bunch of souvenir stores selling frog-themed crap of all shapes and sizes. There are also several frog themed sculptures, and I thought this one was really cool. It's two frogs with samurai swords, standing on the back of another frog.