Maiden Voyage

Monday, August 6th, 2007

Hello Ultrafans and family. This is UltraGirl and this is my first post.
I just wanted to share a short summary of our recent trip with you.

UltraBob and I went for a drive last week to Karuizawa in Nagano prefecture. UltraBob had being wanting to go for a long drive since we got our new car with a navigation system. You might remember Nagano as the place where the 1998 Winter Olympics were held, and Karuizawa is in the Northern part of Nagano, a famous summer resort area in Japan.

After loading a cooler box with sandwiches I made for lunch, some bottles of ginger-ale, sweet summer peaches, and snacks, we were ready for about a 5 hour drive.

It was a weekday so driving was smooth. We first arrived at a ranch and walked around a bit, and went off to Onioshidashi where you can walk around natural pathways made of streams of lava stone.

The air is cooler, with less people, and lots of nature around and the sandwiches were tasty. We also checked out a water fall called Shiraito.

We stayed at a little highland hotel called Magenta. The owner of the hotel is a great cook, and served us a wonderful French course dinner in which he used lots of local Nagano vegetables. His original dinner was completed with very good espresso coffee, but the main dish, amazingly tender beef steak, made UltraBob want to move there. The hotel has three little Onsen baths which you can reserve for your own use. One of the baths has a balcony surrounded by trees and flowers, and it was really nice to stand there feeling the breeze after a hot bath.

We had a relaxing, quiet, wonderful time there.

By UltraGirl at 04:24 PM Link to this post here!
4 comment s


  • on August 6th, 2007 04:35 PM UltraBob said:

    Hey Babes, I’m glad to see you make you first post, and a very nice one it is!  Hopefully we finally have a reliable dynamic duo of talented posters to keep this site going!  The pictures are very nice, and I had a very good time with you.  Are you planning on another post talking about what we did after Hotel Magenta?

    Great work, a wonderful first foray into blogging!

  • on August 6th, 2007 05:44 PM UltraMom said:

    UltraGirl! What a fabulous post! I felt like (and wished) I was there. The pictures are great. I really look forward to having a more active co-poster.

  • on August 7th, 2007 12:09 AM Kristen said:

    Karuizawa has great forests and feels so cool compared to Tokyo. I’d move there, too, but not for the beef. Thanks for telling us about your road trip!

  • on August 15th, 2007 09:03 PM Jessica said:

    Sounds like a fun time. The pictures are really beautiful. Good beef is a perfectly reasonable reason to move anywhere.