Our Last Stop in Japan
Our original plan for the trip was to avoid big cities. Spending four nights in Japan's third largest city was never on the agenda. However, we found ourselves increasing our stay in Nagoya from one transit night to four nights. One of the reasons we did not carry on with our original plan to visit towns off the beaten track was the complexity of organising public transport to the less populated regions of Japan. Nagoya partly counters that with a number of travel operators running day trips to Takayama or the postal towns of Magome/Tsumajo-juku. We could use Nagoya as a base to visit some the locations from our original plan.
The change from the small towns of 50,000 to 250,000 population to a big city like Nagoya with 2.5 million people was staggering. All of the sudden there were more people (and cyclists) sharing the footpath with us, traffic on the road and a pervasive sense of activity swamped us. The sense of peace, calm and space disappeared the closer our Shinkasen approached Nagoya.
We set ourselves up to enjoy Nagoya. We went the extra mile to stay in a nice hotel usually outside of our budget to help make the extra time in a city more enjoyable. The train system makes exploring the city super easy. While each city may have their own preferred public transport stored value card, we were able to use the Suica stored valued card to pay for all our train journeys across Tokyo and Nagoya across different service providers. This together with Google Maps' wonderful journey planning guiding us to the right platform made commuting by trains so much easier.
Like Tokyo, Nagoya is a cosmopolitan and modern city. There were many sky scrappers and shinny malls. But tucked away in this city are historic temples, quaint shopping streets and gardens. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the Toyota Commemorative Museum. It wasn't the cars that caught my eye but rather the cotton yarn spinning start of the company that held my attention. I never knew how yarn was produced from cotton plants and seeing for myself how yarn is spun on a loom to a massive automated machinery the size of a apartment blew my mind.
We also enjoyed Nagoya castle and Atsuta shrine. Shopping along the historic and quaint covered shopping streets is nice for a while but it quickly tires us out. As much as we tried, Nagoya or maybe just the fact that it is a big city sapped our energy. There were moments of joy like a good meal of Hitsumabushi (Grilled Eel), quiet Shotengais (covered shopping streets) and beautiful autumn colours. Mainly, we felt very tired. Our lack of enthusiasm and the cost of day trips out of Nagoya made us decide to take it easy and just relax in Nagoya. A little research uncovered a little gem of a town, Inuyama, just 30 mins by local train from inner city Nagoya. Inuyama has a set of edo period streets with beautiful shophouses, a castle, shinto shrines and a lovely garden to boot. It is not Magome. But an wonderful and accessible place to visit.
Overall, we rate Nagoya as "Has merits". I won't recommend visiting the city. Neighbour cities like Tokyo and Kyoto have much better places to see and experiences to enjoy.
This trip has helped us learn more about ourselves. We are not big city people and we're not a couple that enjoys long holidays. Apart from the cost of the travel, we are creatures of comfort and routine. Travel takes effort and cost. There is effort in planning before the trip and logistics during travel. When I was younger, that effort was fun. It is not so much fun now. This trip will help shape our future travels.
