Day 7: Nagoya

Today we went to Nagoya. It was so boring. It was so boring that I would have rather stayed in my student dorm back in Oita.

Nagoya is the fourth largest city in Japan, how come it is so boring? When you look around in the subway you notice that the people are older, uglier, and smellier than in Tokyo. The highlight of Nagoya is the Castle.
I was so bored today that  the mental pain even started to translate into physical pain. I started to feel exhausted, got a headache and felt uneasy.

We bought a Japan Rail Pass. We paid about 250 Euros and we can use as many trains as we want within one week. Today the first day of our ticket started and we could use the subway (from the JR company) for free and we could use a shinkansen from Tokyo to Nagoya. It only takes 2h.

Japan's fastest train - shinkansen

When we waited for our shinkansen it was funny to see that suddenly cleaning women in pink uniforms lined up at the track, waiting to get on the train and to clean it.

The customers get off the train and the cleaning women stand at the side of the exit and bow.

For a German this a very strange sight.

I have been looking forward to use the shinkansen, the Japanese high speed train. Wikipedia says that the highest speed at a test ride was over 443 km/h.

It was unspectacular. It was like riding any other train.

I do not know what I had expected. A time travel maybe?

 

Nagoya Castle - the highlight from today

 

At the foot of the tower deers were running around. Definitely highlighting the highlight!

But apart from the castle there is not really anything exciting to see or do in Nagoya. We were really depressed, when we were running around, going to the supposed sights, which the information center had given us, because the sights were nothing exciting.

It seems as if Nagasaki tried to enforce sights from any minor detail. We were even lured into a warehouse (at Nagoya castle), a supposed sight, where we saw nothing but a long corridor, on the left side a construction site. Great. See for yourself:

Nagoya is a very poor city if this is a sight.

 

Something that cheered me up and relieved me from my pain a little bit. Some crazy people in costumes running around at Nagoya castle. I think they are performers and perform a play at this castle.

 

 There we are. Three Germans and two crazy Japanese.

 

If you see this sign, go the other direction.

  

One pretty moment of the day. At a crossing in Nagoya near Sakae station.

  

I wonder what the shopowner thought when he named his shop. Seriously, I wonder which Japanese words sounds like "Puff". 

  

Hm, is this due to sexual harassment in Nagoya? As there are only old people there I canot imagine the problem to be that serious.

  

Fabian and I ate Shio Ramen for lunch. We had been running around Nagoya to find a nice eating place, then we had been running around the huge station in order to find a konbini or an eating place. So we were pretty hungry and lacking energy when we finally sat down and could eat.

After our Shio-Ramen, which we ate in a nice shop in the station, we decided to go back earlier than planned. Already at 3 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. But before leaving we wanted to go some more sightseeing, which was recommended by the information map. There were 4 interesting buildings, which were supposed to be near the station. We wanted to extend some time in Nagoya, because we wanted the long shinkansen ride to be worth it. Haha, we had just stepped outside the station,immediately saw the first building, then directly next to it, the other, then the other two. We tool pictures, click-cklick-cklick - and after 5 seconds also this sightseeing was done. Great. Here are the pictures: (I was not motivated enough to raise my hand and take a picture of the fourth building, sorry)

 

 

 

In the evening we walked around Shinjuku station and checked out some stores. Here in Tokyo we often see a department store called OIOI. When I go back to Germany, nothing will look appealing to me anymore, because in Japanese department stores the products are much more interesting and cute than in let's say Kaufhof.

Here is a video of Shinjuku station. Here you can see how many people run around there, always in a hurry:

And I also want to show you something, which I call in German "Augenkrebs-Laden" (eye cancer shop), because it hurts my eyes to go there. It is loud, the colours are bright, it is chaotic,... I don't know why Japanese like this. I always get a headache when I am in there for more than 3 minutes.