Nagoya

Sunday 8 June

No rush this morning as our train for Nagoya didn’t leave until nearly 11:00 and we had reserved seats. The first leg of our trip was to Hakata the capital of Kyushu Island where we changed to a Shinkansen bound for Shin-Osaka. During this journey some of the towns and villages we passed through were enveloped in heavy smoke, this was caused by farmers who were burning off their rice straw, though in a country that still allows smoking in restaurants I don’t suppose they would worry about the effects on the population’s respiratory systems.

As we approached the coast the country became very hilly so the train spent as much time in as out of tunnels, one took around five minutes and when we emerged we were on the main island Honshu, having travelled under the sea. For the next hour we travelled through many tunnels until the country levelled out a little and the mountains were replaced by villages and farms though still quite hilly.

At Shin-Osaka we transferred to the Tokyo Shinkansen with 16 carriages, twice the length as the last train, shortly after leaving we passed a train yard with over thirty 16 carriage bullets trains parked, these would operate during week days on the Hakata – Tokyo line, only a small part of the Japanese rail system and we can’t manage one in Australia.

We arrived in Nagoya a little after 4:30, travelling 930 km in about 5 ½ hours and this included waiting time when we changed trains.

Monday 9 June

Nagoya, like most of the major cities around the world, has an excellent underground system which makes it very easy to find your way around and like all places in Japan an excellent ticketing system. They had one in 1990 when we were here so why is the Victorian Government wasting so much money re-inventing the wheel? In fact all the overseas cities we have visited over the last 20 years have had excellent ticketing systems which Victoria could have adapted.

A short underground ride brought us to the station about 200 m from the Nagoya Castle gate. This castle along with Kumamoto and Osaka castles is designated one of the three most significant castles in Japan and also like the other two has been rebuilt following extensive damage during the war, so in reality they are reproductions but from the outside it is impossible to tell.

On the roof of the original castle were two golden dolphins these could be seen when the pace was first built from overs 3 km away. They were carved from Cypress and then coated with lead sheet, next copper and finally gold sheet, the total weight of gold used was 275 kg. I suppose there was a lot of raking of the ashes after the fire in 1945.

As at Kumamoto the residential palace was also destroyed and the Nagoya Government is currently raising funds to rebuild the palace as is was originally. They are fortunate to have the original plans and many photographs together with a lot of the original walls, screens and ceiling with their beautiful painted scenes, these were all stored away from the palace during the war.

Surrounding the palace are many acres of gardens with pools and tea houses scattered through them, walking under the trees provided a welcome relief from the high humidity which was a result of overnight rain.

From the palace we walked to the Nagoya Noh Theatre and while we couldn’t see the auditorium as it was in use, the museum and displays had many costume and miniatures of stage sets and a wide screen TV provided a video of a performance, very interesting but I think the performers were on Valium they moved so slowly.

Walking from the theatre towards Oasis 21 shopping centre a Japanese girl asked us if we wanted directions and walked with us for about 15 minutes, she has travelled extensively around the world and spoke excellent English. Oasis 21 was completed in 2002 with the theme of “Space Ship Aqua” as the roof over the large open space is a glass ellipse pond with what we presumed were boats when viewed from below but on the roof looked like whales.

As we are leaving for home tomorrow, at around 5:00 we decided to return to the hotel to rest up before our trip to Tokyo and our flight home; is it really eleven weeks since we left?