A trip to a new place is always an interesting proposition to a photographer, and coupled with a well known scenic route...well, I was certainly intrigued. 

Toyama is a city (and a prefecture) which sits roughly equidistant between Kanazawa (where I've been) and Nagano prefecture (where I lived very briefly). The alpine route is a hiking course which straddles the two prefectures. Our schedule was pretty tight: go up to Toyama on one day, meet some of my wife's friends, then do the hiking route and return on the next day. Fortunately, Japan's outstanding public transport network makes this a feasible option.

First set of pictures are from Toyama itself. So here we go.

This little girl was nice enough to stand right in the middle of the frame as I was lining it up, not that I asked her to...

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Then the sun came out and...

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Boat ride on the water, which must have been quite chilly (Toyama is several degrees colder than Nagoya)

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I'm making an effort to learn to see wide-angle (I agree with Jay Maisel when he says that different photographers see in different ways : some see in telephoto, some in wide, etc. I tend to see more telephoto than wide, so I have to work on the wide angle side of things) and the iPhone is excellent for that: it gives something like a 27 or 28mm view so it's great for experimenting with on wide shots.

The main attraction in Toyama is the castle and park, and as our visit happened to coincide with the visit of the Emperor and Empress to the city (the first time in fifteen years, according to local press) there were a lot of people around. Some shots from the park and castle follow:

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Waiting for a glimpse of the Emperor...

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Toyama streets...

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And the station, which has recently started a Shinkansen service.

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That's it for Toyama (well, it will feature very briefly in the next part), so the next part will mainly be of the (extremely impressive) scenery of the alpine route.

Thanks for looking!