Host of the 1998 Winter Olympics — snow monkeys bathing in hot springs, the thousand-year-old Zenkoji temple, soba noodles made from Shinshu buckwheat, and Hakuba's world-class ski slopes
Nagano Prefecture occupies Japan's landlocked central spine — the Japanese Alps — and the prefectural capital city of Nagano (pop. 370,000) anchors what may be Japan's most dramatic alpine landscape. The city is most famous internationally for the 1998 Winter Olympics, which left behind Hakuba's top-ranked ski resorts and a surge of international access; domestically, it's equally famous for Zenkoji Temple, a 1,400-year-old Buddhist temple that houses Japan's oldest Buddha image (kept in permanent darkness, opened only once every seven years), for the Japanese macaques ('snow monkeys') that b…
The Nagano basin has been inhabited since the Jomon period; the Zenkoji Temple was founded around 642 AD and has been one of Japan's most important pilgrimage sites ever since — unusually, it accepts worshippers from all Buddhist sects, making it ecumenical in a country where sectarian boundaries are normally strict. The surrounding region (called Shinano Province until the Meiji era) was strategically critical during Japan's Sengoku civil wars: the legendary rivalry between Takeda Shingen of Kai and Uesugi Kenshin of Echigo was fought largely over control of the Nagano basin, producing the f…