Because I am still waiting for some photos taken by Junten teachers, these updates are going to be slightly out of order. I actually went to Nagoya the weekend after we went to Disneyland and tried all those crazy activities with the Thai students. Please also bear in mind that it is currently six billion degrees in Tokyo and as such my laptop is melting almost as fast as I can type. 

If you consider either of these excuses to be good enough to justify how late this update is, please send a stamped address envelope to…

Anyway, my trip to Nagoya started as all good holidays do - by waking up at some terrible time in the morning. 4am to be precise. This is the second earliest time I've woken up this year, and I certantly have no intention of pushing it into third. Hopping (or rather falling) onto a virtually deserted train from Oji to Tokyo, I had plenty of time to contemplate why on earth I was putting myself through this. There was no way I was going to feel up for a day exploring Nagoya feeling like this. Thank goodness for the Shinkansen bullet train. A three hour, 130mph journey that I slept the entirity of. Now I'm ready to face Nagoya!

I was met at the station by my good buddy Mari, who I met on my final day in Kyoto. Mari lives in the town of Gifu, about 15 minutes from Nagoya, making it her local major city. Thus I was very grateful to have a Nagoya pro to show me around. After having lots of coffee, we headed to Nagoya Castle, about a 15 minute Subway ride from the centre. The old saying "You never do anything until people come to visit" was proven true once more, as it was Mari's first time to see the castle.

Yes, it's the most stereotypical Japanese castle I've ever seen. Aside from the colour, I suppose. Each of the four floors of the castle is host to a different part of the museum that runs throughout - history, culture, something I forgot, and finally gift shop. You may think that having a gift shop at the very top of a building of significant cultural importance is not suitable, but this is Japan, and damned if I'm not buying my Nagoya Castle Hello Kitty keychain.

It's hard to spot in that photo, but at the very top of the castle there are two golden whales. They are the symbol of Nagoya, and they are very cool. As I understand it, the closer one in that photo is male, and the other one is female. There was an opportunity to buy a cuddly dolphin toy, and I came this close to doing so, before remembering our flat is far too small for an aquarium.

The castle gardens, as with all gardens in this country, were immaculate. I love gardens and often get accused of taking too many photos of them. Personally I don't think I take enough. I took about sixty this time. Oh come on, that's not many…

I believe it was Crowded House who gave the advice to "always take the weather with you". I am going to have Crowded House moved into an incredibly crowded hole in the ground soon because about twenty minutes after I arrived the British weather finally caught up and it started raining. Looking on the bright side, we decided to head back into Nagoya, where I tried some traditional food of the area, which was basically a big slab of meat over some noodles and soup. No complaints here.

I'm aware this update is quite short, but I am going to do Disneyland  next I think, then Nagoya part 2. This is partly to keep your interest and partly because it takes ages to recolour thousands of photos of Japanese gardens…

I will leave you today with a photo taken from the top of the castle. It's got lots of green in it because, as I believe we've established about a thousand times now, taking photos of gardens makes me all happy. More photos are available on the photosite as ever.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 11:25 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.