No Culture Day, but…
Tuesday 4th November
So, yesterday was Culture Day, but that had some implications for today. I will get to that. First things first.
After having breakfast with Elmira and Juan, I went out, on my way to the Toyota Museum. You have to know that this is not the Toyota Commemorative Museum for Industrial Technology, but the Toyota Museum. Whereas the former showcases feats of industrial technology, such as the playing-violin robot, the latter showcases special types of Toyota cars and has items related to the company on display. The former is in Nagoya, while the latter is in Nagakute.
Nagakute was relatively easily reached via the Higayashiyama line (yellow) headed towards Fujigaoka, where you transfer on another line of a different company, towards Geidaidori, where you get off. From there it’s only a short walk to the museum.
Once I entered the area, I had a look around and found an ancient style basu (bus) and a hyper modern version. (pictures will follow)
Unfortunately, that’s about all I got as the museum was closed for the day. In fact, I think most museums in the country were probably closed. You see, after looking into it, it appears that most museums are closed (only) on Mondays and certain special days. Museums are not closed on Mondays, if that day happens to be a national holiday. In that case, they are open and close the next day. So this happened yesterday and today. No museums… No Toyota Museum.
Since it was such nice weather, I decided to go to the (specifically) designated grass field, sat down, enjoyed the view and relative silence and contemplated what I would do next. The only sensible thing to to was simply go back, which I did. And oh, riding on those fully automated trains, that have no driver, so you can look out to the front ahead, is awesome!
Once back in Nagoya, I headed to Sakae, an area of Nagoya. There were supposed to be lots of shops available there, but I did not see them. So, I decided on walking back to Nagoya eki (station) and hoping to stumble upon something of interest. That did not happen until I was almost at the eki, where I found what appeared to be a subway entrance. But closer inspection revealed that it was in fact an entrance to a whole underground shopping arcade. Nothing fancy as far as I could tell and unpleasantly warm also.
Unsatisfied, I searched for more shops but Google Maps insisted that they were near Sakae, where I started my walk. So, I headed back anyways, via an alternative route and in the end I once more came across these subway entrance type things, which were indeed entrances to a complete shopping mall, underground. Below the Central Park, this time.
Although, these shops where definitely more fancy, they were still not what I was looking for. So after doing a round, I headed to the subway and took a chikatetsu (subway train) back to Nagoya eki. There I got off to the wrong side of the station (as it turned out) and here I found a lot of stores of which Bic Camera struck my fancy the most. You could compare it to Bijenkorf on steroids.
The whole store consists of about 8 floors I think and it has everything of anything. Just so you know, in spite of the misleading name. I literally walked around in there for hours, just looking at everything. Yay! The sun hadn’t even set before I entered, but when I got out it was dark as night, if you discount all the screaming lights on the streets and such…
Quick side note: make sure you go to Japan with a credit card that is Visa compatible. Mastercard just doesn’t work everywhere as I keep finding out and hearing from Juan.
Anyways, time to go find something to eat! Juan had been kind enough to give me directions to some kind of plaza in a building close to the eki, so I took my chances and went over there. When I got there (thank you Google Maps!), there was indeed a small selection of restaurants, but all in different styles.
I decided upon the burger restaurant and received a menu, mostly in English, which was convenient. However, staff did not speak English and I had some difficulty ordering (as mentioned in an earlier post). Ultimately, things turned out OK and I got what I wanted, which was totemo oishii desu (very tasty).
After paying, with cash yet again, I went out to the shopping district and did some more shopping. I got me a nice tripod for my camera, so that I can make nice steady shots in the dark. 🙂
Finally, I walked back to the apartment via a long, long detour, which resulted in not much of interest actually…
Oh well. Tomorrow it’s off to Tōkyō for me, my final stop, where I will stay for 4 nights. This means I will have almost 4 days of city exploring in front of me, as on the final day I will just leisurely go to the airport and be sure to catch my flight back to Hong Kong, where I will transfer to Schiphol.