The actual bakery was just across the street, too! It was expensive but I got really excited.
Matsumoto was surprisingly picturesque. I've already mentioned how nice it was.
It's got a castle, where I was waylaid by an English-speaking volunteer guide. It also had a ton of little touristy sites downtown, most of which are in that statue album I posted recently. We stayed for two nights, and since we had access to a kitchen, we decided to shop at the local supermarket for dinner. Being from Pittsburgh, we were excited to find this:
On our rest day, I was excited to go to the Japan Ukiyoe Museum.
Ukiyoe is the Japanese word for woodblock prints, although it literally means "pictures of the floating world." Apparently it houses the largest collection of woodblock prints, collected and passed down by a wealthy merchant family since the art form's heyday in the Tokugawa era. I was also treated to a slideshow in English, and then right afterwards the narrator appeared behind the ticket desk.
To be honest, though, I was more impressed with the Matsumoto museum of art.
It focused mostly on native artists, but they were pretty cool, including Yayoi Kasuma. I also really enjoyed an exhibit devoted to a landscape painter that included a reconstruction of his studio.
The next day we headed for an "organic pizza restaurant" that was on my map, which turned out to be in an artsy farm-y town north of Matsumoto. It started to rain as we zeroed in on the area, and then based on my reading of the map we had to push our bikes along an unpaved path to get to it. I'd say it was probably one of the most magical moments on the whole trip. The food and decor and atmosphere were all very comforting, and I even shelled out the extra money for 玄米 brown rice, because you can never find it in Japan. These pictures don't really do it justice, but I'll post them anyways.
They are actually called Shalom, and right now the literature they gave me is tucked away. They've got a ペンション bed and breakfast, a cafe where you can see them make the bread, and a "bazaar". What actually made me almost cry was hearing American folk music playing in the bazaar.
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