At this rate, I might finish this trip report before my next one...
I've sort of been to Nagoya before, but never really in the city proper. My wife and I had a day to kill before a concert happening nearby, so we decided to finally explore the city. Obviously, this meant a shinkansen ride - always a high point of any Japan trip!
No green car this time - we weren't using a rail pass and this little day trip was already costing us far too much. I mean we almost didn't even go - I wanted to see Scandal again, but I really did not realize it was going to cost $400 to get there and back until we actually went to buy the train tickets. My wife had to convince me that I'd regret it if we didn't go through with it at that point. We already had third row tickets to the show.
Ordinary cars are still pretty comfortable on the shinkansen. Just a tiny bit less so than the green cars, and you'd better grab the food cart lady when she passes you the first time because chances are she ain't comin' back.
Obligatory Mt. Fuji shot from the train. It is surprisingly difficult to get a good shot of Mt. Fuji while traveling at 160mph. Every single shot I took except this one has a pole right in the middle.
It's the 50th anniversary of the shinkansen and Japan is celebrating all over the place. Signs are everywhere and even the post office is selling commemorative stamp booklets.
Nagoya station.
This is supposedly a very famous udon noodle shop that's in an underground mall near Nagoya station - my wife really wanted to eat here and her brother wanted her to buy some noodles to bring back home. I don't remember the name of this place, but I'll update if I find it again. By the time we left, the line was like 100 people long. (We got there at about 11AM and there was no line to speak of).
My udon. To be honest... I couldn't eat it. It's not my style. The broth tasted... brown. Very brown. Kinda burnt, somehow. The noodles are extremely thick and slightly undercooked, which is intentional - they're supposed to be whatever the Japanese equivalent of "al dente" is. That's what this place is famous for. I just found it kind of unappetizing. I went to McDonald's afterwards.
We didn't have anything really planned in the city but as we left the station and started walking around, we happened upon a ska festival.
It turned out this kind of thing was going on all over the city. I don't know if it was just the one weekend we were there, but there seemed to be free concerts and other outdoor events happening pretty much everywhere we turned. The city seems like a pretty happening town. You don't see this kind of thing much at all in Tokyo, but you could almost turn your head in any direction and see some other outdoor event going on somewhere.
Nagoya TV Tower. I have a kind of obsession with Japan's towers. Every city has at least one, and I always visit them in any new city I go to.
Partial view from the tower. This is Nagoya!
I'm not sure exactly what this is but it looked interesting. There was an event going on here too.
Another view of the tower, and some of the remnants of the various events that were already winding down at that point.
After this we did a little shopping and then hopped back onto public transportation to take us way out to Fujia University for our Scandal concert - you can read about that here if you want.
More soon!
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