日本: overdue nagoya trip

this post is about a week overdue, but better late than never. the weekend before last was a long weekend, and relatively last minute i decided to head down to nagoya with tamae. she had a friend there that she was going to visit, and it was a city i had never been to before so decided to tag along. nagoya is the 4th largest city in japan, and not really known for any truly spectacular sights. but it was nice to get out of the country and into a city for a change even though the weather wasn't too wonderful.

tamae and i headed out about 6am saturday morning. took the highway bus into tokyo (about an hour) then managed to find the shinkansen (bullet train, that only leaves from major cities in japan) that we wanted.

tamae and myself

*side note, thursday before we headed out we decided we should pre-buy our shinkansen tickets as it was a long weekend and many people may heading out of town. we weren't exactly sure we could do it at the local train station but decided we would check. tou our surprise we were able to! we got to the station, asked the ticket man and after he asked us a few questions about when and where were going, he proceeded to fill out a form (that i actually could have figured out on my own i think). then he stuck it under a scanner on a machine next to the other ticket machines and walked away because the station was getting busy. to our surprise the machine started talking to us. the machine scans the document and then some operator somewhere receives the information and speaks to you over an intercom. it was very unexpected, and we had a hard time gaining composure after bursting out laughing and causing a scene. but we made it through all of the questions in japanese, paid the machine/man and walked out with our tickets in about 10 minutes. this may not seem all that funny but you have to visualize a really small country train station, manned by one attendant and 1 ticket machine, and 1 shinkansen ticket machine.

back to the trip...
once arriving in Nagoya we stashed our bags in a locker at the train station and headed to an art museum that had a display of Rembrandt etchings. not very japanese-ish but pretty amazing none the less. then we grabbed some starbucks! (coffee in japan really isn't too good, so starbucks is a welcomed treat when i venture into a city) then we hopped on another train and headed out to Nam, tamae's friends apt. changed quick then headed for dinner with about 10 JETs in Nagoya. it was great to meet other JETs, but also strange. while we all come over here under the same program, everyone really has a different setup and experience. and i think after talking to them, i appreciate the Ibaraki crew and my setup (even in the middle of rice paddies) more.

sunday we planned to go to inuyama castle, a little outside of Nagoya city (inuyama-literally means dog mountain, we couldn't really figure out why?) and michinomiya (an ancient town). but the weather was uncooperative, the castle and surrounding shrines were larger than expected, and we got a little lost. so we ended up only making it to inuyama castle, which was really neat. it was a 5 story castle from about 1400. you could actually go inside and climb the very narrow, scary stares all the way to the top. and then there were gorgeous views of the whole area.

castle, views, shrines surrounding the castle...

first signs of fall, hard to believe in this heat!

monday, we ventured into nagoya with nam, walked around the city a bit. saw some of the sights, more industrial, not as aesthetically pleasing. went to a book store to buy japanese study materials (i wish i was naturally better at languages!). then had to get on our train to head home.