Spring Vacation part 6: Nagoya

名古屋

The initial plan for the following day was to stop at Ise, and then head on to Nagoya, but it turns out that getting to Ise from Kyoto wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, so we went straight to Nagoya, which was really just as cold as Osaka. When walking to our hotel there were all these people giving us directions on where to walk and barriers and god knows what, and I couldn’t understand why. It was a normal pavement. I later found out from Miyuki (girl from my neighbourhood in Kozoji = Nagoya who I met up with as well) that the building we had walked past on the way to the hotel was this big fancy new building that had opened just the week before, so they were expecting crowds, hence the directions ;) Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself again. Miyuki wasn’t home when I arrived in Nagoya and Daan didn’t know we had gone straight to Nagoya instead of going to Ise first and we weren’t traveling together so Luuk and I decided to go see my old house. That was really strange. Not only seeing my old house (which is for rent by the way!) but also having Luuk there, who is from a completely different part of my life. The neighbourhood hadn’t changed but except for a few extra houses here and there. Good old Kozoji! We went back to Nagoya station after that where we met up with Miyuki!! Turns out she hardly speaks English anymore, when she was so determined to learn! Good thing I can speak Japanese now, too bad for Luuk though. She took us to Midland Square, the big new building I mentioned earlier, and we took the (REALLY FAST!) elevator to the top where we had an amazing view of Nagoya. This new building is the new tallest building of Nagoya, it used to be the Nagoya station towers. After having a go at purikura we went to meet Daan again to go have dinner. Luuk had been dying to go to kaitenzushi (the conveyer belt sushi places) so it was high time we tried that, and it was really really fun! Good to have Miyuki there too to explain and order things for us :) (yes, you can just order things as well instead of just waiting for it to come by on the conveyer belt ;)). Next was a quick drink at a way too expensive izakaya with a difficult conversation with Miyuki. She is a lot less talkative than she used to be, making chatting really hard. It wasn’t long before we headed back to our respective beds.

We made a plan with Miyuki to go to Ise the next day, so we got up early, only to have to wait almost an hour for the train. Grr. The train was just a regular train, and for a while there were no seats, and it was a good hour and a half or so to Ise. Ise by the way is a small town which holds in the holiest shrine of japan (that you are not allowed to see mind you) one of the three holy items of Japan, in this case the holy mirror. Ise is really beautiful, there are relatively few foreign tourists as it is not on a main route, and the various shrines that make up the complex are surrounded by huge, huge trees. The shrine architecture is also quite different from most shrines you see and in the tradition of Shinto shrines, they have to renew the shrine every 20 years, and here you could clearly see the reserved areas where the next shrine was to be built in due time. Miyuki had never been so she was glad to come along, but was definitely talkative. Too bad. When getting back I said goodbye to Miyuki she went off to meet a friend and Luuk and I went off to find some food. I wanted to go to Sizzlers, this restaurant I always used to go to. Now I couldn’t quite remember where it was, and after walking around for at least half an our or so and getting quite cold, I had had enough. I knew I was close, I recognized the area, but couldn’t find the stupid restaurant. We stopped and I asked a local man where the restaurant was. He told me it was right next door, and I was about to jump for joy when he told me it had closed down last year. I looked around the corner and yes… it was gone! *gasp*. Instead of my yummy restaurant there was now a… you will never guess. A robot museum *double gasp*. Not even FOOD. No, a f-ing ROBOT MUSEUM. Of course Luuk jumped for joy and we just had to go in. I must admit it was quite interesting, but I was aching and hungry. So we walked to the tv tower where we said we’d meet Daan at 8. After waiting for like 10 minutes for this lady to heat up a muffin that ended up not the least bit warm (idiot) there was no Daan and I was fed up. So Luuk and I headed back to where we had walked earlier where there were lots of restaurants and things. We couldn’t really find anything to suit our fancy, until we remember the big steak restaurant we had passed earlier, and luckily Luuk had paid attention and still knew where it was. I swear, that was the best burger and the best onion rings and best beer I had had in aaaages. I know we are in Japan and should be eating delicious Japanese food, but that was just…. Well, awesome. Daan went to take arrange a hotel while Luuk and I had a pint of guiness at an “irish pub” and then went back to the hotel, very happy ;).

We had one more day in Nagoya which we spent visiting Osu Kannon, Oasis 21 (new area in Nagoya that was built after I moved away where they have cute little stores and a UFO like structure you can go up on to to see Nagoya view), and then going to Nagoya harbour and on to Itariamura, in other words, Italian village. It looked like Venice, it was so weird! It was full of Italian brand shops and little ‘ristorantes’, really amazing! And expensive too, but none the less a little fun on our last night in Nagoya