Nagoya

Our last stop on the trip was Nagoya, sort of a half-way point between Matsuyama and Tokyo. Originally Nagoya was going to be my first stop, and then Osaka and then Matsuyama and then back to Tokyo. But thankfully my host-mom suggested Nagoya as the last stop so that we wouldn't be traveling so far in one night like I wanted to.

So while we waited for the night bus to take us from Matsuyama to Nagoya, I suddenly realized that I did not have my coat (the black one). I remembered having it in Matsuyama, though, and realized I'd left it on the bus. Another legacy from the nasty 13th. So I e-mailed a lady at my school's Center for International Studies (CIS) on my cell phone (I love Japanese cell phones!), and she e-mailed me back within the hour saying that she'd found it! I was so relieved! Unfortunately, it was left at the bus depot and we were just about to get onto the night bus so I couldn't simply take a taxi and go get it. But the lady that was helping me got them to mail it back to my host-parents' house for me. What a stroke of luck! (I'll brag on the people in CIS in another entry, because they are awesome.)

Well, we got on the bus (a double decker) and we were in the very front on the top part, so we got lots of leg room. If you must take a night bus, I highly recommend taking one by the JR bus company. It may be a bit more expensive, but their buses actually have toilets on them and they don't try to bake you while you sleep. It was still really difficult to sleep, though. Eventually your bottom falls asleep and that's never fun. But we got to Nagoya in the wee hours of the morning. This kind of stunk for me since I had no coat and it was windy, but I managed. We found a McDonalds and ate breakfast before thinking about what we could do between then (6:00 AM) and when we could check into our hotel (3:00 PM) We put our bags in a locker at Nagoya station and then went off to see things that my friend had wanted to see.

Since she really likes bridges we went to the bridge that leads to the Nagoya aquarium. It was pretty neat, actually. And after that we went to a shopping center and just sat around until it was almost 3:00. Eventually we went back to Nagoya station and got our bags and checked into the hotel. We were pretty beat since we hadn't slept much the night before and we had been walking all day. So we showered, ordered pizza (which was ridiculously expensive) and my friend did her laundry.



The next day we got up, checked out, put our luggage in another locker and went to our first stop for the day, Nagoya castle. This one is really popular, and not NEARLY as nice an experience as Nijo castle was. It was very crowded, and the building didn't have any AC, of course, and they had set up the inside like a museum with exhibits and stuff. And most of the paintings were copies. It was sort of a disappointment, but we got most of our souvenirs, since we didn't want the food to go bad before we got back. If you buy souvenirs for a Japanese person, get them food. That's what they do. As I've said before, Japanese people love food, and every region has it's specialties.



And inside the castle grounds they had a tea house that was set up like a showroom. It had tons of paper dolls dressed up for a parade.



Our second stop was the Nagoya Noh Theater. It actually wasn't all that interesting, unfortunately, and we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the museum. We didn't actually see a show (I'm sure we would have fallen asleep), but they were showing a pre-recorded one in the museum. After that we made our way over to the Atsuta Shrine where the Imperial Sword is supposed to be kept. This shrine, apparently is often used for marriage ceremonies. And they had roosters walking around! It was kind of interesting.



Afterwards we met up with one of my best friend's from my home college and her parents. We ate at Denny's and then walked around near the station before we had to catch our night bus back to Tokyo.



What did you guys think of the trip? Was there anything in particular you had questions about? Let me know, and I'll see if I can answer them!