Nagano, Nagano

Nagano is the capital and largest city of Nagano Prefecture in the Koshin'etsu subregion of Japan's Chubu region, situated in the Nagano Basin at an elevation of 371.4 meters that makes it the highest of Japan's prefectural capitals. It hosted the 1998 Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympics, the third Olympic Games and second Winter Olympics held in Japan, and the event brought major infrastructure investment including the Hokuriku Shinkansen, which cut travel time between Tokyo and Nagano to seventy-nine minutes over 221 kilometers. As of July 2023 the city, designated a core city of Japan, had a population of 365,296 across 834.81 square kilometers.