Official Travel Guide of Shinanomachi, Nagano

Shinano town, which designated as a special heavy snowfall area, is covered with deep snow every winter. In the mountains and forests that spread throughout the town, bamboos and shrub bushes are all hidden under snow. Then, the forests and plateaus in the town turn into the vast snowshoe fields. This time, we will show you the fun of  snowshoeing in Shinano’s winter. What is snowshoeing? Snowshoe is a tool for walking on deep snow. Japan has long used Japanese style snowshoes called “Kanjiki” woven with bamboo or wood during the snow season. Western style snowshoes, on the other hand, have high buoyancy and are suitable for walking on deep snow. Even for the people using it for the first …

What is Nojiriko hominin? Were there humans in Japan 40,000 years ago? Approaching the mystery that affects Japanese history …! Q. Did people definitely exist here at that time? A. That is the biggest matter. Some think it is true, while others think they hadn’t come from the continent yet. If there were no humans yet, what were these stone tools found here? What are these if not stone tools? However, some people say that a certain part may not be stone tools, actually there is no consensus yet. Some people think that even the bone tools are not. Although, researchers in overseas almost recognize it as bone tools. Because similar things have been found a lot in overseas. Q. Is there a …

Lake Nojiri, located in Shinano town, Nagano Prefecture, is famous as an excavation site of fossils of Naumann elephant. This time, we interviewed with Mr. Kondo, director of the Lake Nojiri Naumann Elephant Museum, and were able to hear about a wide variety of topics, including excavation of Lake Nojiri and global climate change. Let’s learn about the environment issue and our future through Naumann Elephant! What is Naumann Elephant？ Naumann elephants used to live in Japan until about tens of thousands of years ago. The fossil of Naumann’s elephant was first discovered in Yokosuka in the early Meiji era. It was named after Dr. Edmond Naumann, a German who was the first professor of geology at Tokyo Imperial University, …

Did you know Shinanomachi has such lovely horses? Yuki-maru and Chacha-maru are 11-year-old small sized horse of Japanese breed. They live in the Horse Lodge that the C.W. Nicol Afan Woodland Trust build at the foothill of Mt. Kurohime. To “bring back the beautiful nature of Japan, and the beautiful heart to appreciate the nature,” Mr. C.W. Nicol bought a portion of devastated woodland for himself 35 years ago, and has successfully restored the forest with plentiful biodiversity. Now he is on the next endeavor to “bring back the horses working in the field” to support his forest restoration, as such the lovely buddies arrived here in 2015. Their mission is the “horse logging,” in which a horse drags the …

History of Shinshu Uchihamono About 450 years ago, during the War period, many swordsmiths moved here to the Shinanomachi area from Echigo region to repair weapons and armors used in war. After that, villagers learned the techniques by blacksmiths who moved to the area, and have been used to make agricultural tools and forest tools. The technique has been handed down from master to disciple, and from child to grandchild, with incremental improvements. Even in the 21st century, there are some craftsmen’s workshops dotted in Furuma area that make cutting blades using traditional techniques. One of the reasons that the area flourished as a cutting tool production is that it was an important place of traffic along the Hokkoku Kaido …