Sightseeing in Nagoya! - 23/2/'14
Today was the first night I slept at the Nagoya Wing Hotel. The night before I stayed at a capsule hotel after a long karaoke session and some drinks in a small bar.
This morning we decided to have breakfast at the hotel, since we were a little bored with the rice balls and bento boxes from the 7eleven. The breakfast consisted of an English breakfast and Japanese food. It was ok, but not really that special.
After breakfast we were picked up by students of the Toyota Technological Institute. They were asked by their professor Hiroyuki Sakaki, if they could show us around that day. First, we went to the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology. The museum was really awesome. They exhibited all kinds of looms, which were used by Toyota in the past. Most of the looms were still working and were demonstrated to us. Besides the ingenious constructed looms, they also exhibited parts of the automatic production line that are used for Toyota cars.
Next we had lunch near Nagoya castle. Almost everyone ordered Hitsumabushi, which is barbecued fish on rice with some kind of miso soup and several toppings for the rice. The idea is to mix the rice with the toppings and add some hot soup over everything. Delicious!
After the great lunch we visited a theater/museum. Unfortunately, there were no shows when we visited, but the building itself and the exhibitions were beautiful. It also smelled really nice, because many parts were constructed of wood, which released a subtle fragrence.
Finally, we visited Nagoya castle. The castle was destroyed in the second world war, but they rebuilt it from scratch. The outside of the castle looked really authentic, but when we went inside, you could see it was reconstructed in an ingenious way. Since there was not much to see inside the castle itself, we went to a park nearby. There we saw part of a Japanese samurai show. I was expecting a lot of sword fighting, but it was mainly talking and making jokes. My Japanese is not good, so we left rather quickly.
Before we went to the final excursion of the day, we went to pick up Wim and Bram who are our new supervisors for the final week. We then went to the electricity museum. Although the idea of the museum was fun, the average age was around 5 to 10 and all the exhibitions were focused on that group. So that was the end of our official programme for that day. However, it was only 16:30 and we still wanted to do something and therefore we went on our own to the Nagoya TV tower were we had a fantastic view over the city during the sunset.
By: Ray Tanuhardja