We took the bullet train west today. The trip was comfy as always and the clear skies provided wonderful views, including of Fuji.
As always we are ekiben on the train, and as always mine was the same as ever: a plain pork cutlet sandwich. It was delicious!
Our destination was the city of Nagoya. While less than a quarter the size of Tokyo, Nagoya is larger than any Australian city and almost every USA city. On trains we’d sped through it many times on the way to and from Kyoto or Osaka: it was time to stop and visit Nagoya itself!
Since we arrived after lunch todays plan was just to get the lay of the land (so to speak) so after dropping our stuff at the hotel we headed east two stops on a subway to visit Mirai Tower:
There’s a strip of parkland running vertically through the city, and this old TV tower has been standing there for 70 years. Apparently it was the first of its kind in Japan (Godzilla even destroyed it in his first ever film!) and even though it’s nostalgically short by todays standards (about 2/3rd the height of Sydney Tower) we had to go up for a look.
That’s the view looking west, with the skyscrapers in the distance being close to Nagoya Station (I’m on the 21st floor of one as I write this). The tower is old and the views aren’t great if you’ve been up taller towers, but it still has a quaint appeal.
One concession to modernity is that the tower sells padlocks for couples to clip onto the gates of the outdoor viewing platform. There were a great many attached – most seemingly very new – and I wonder how often they are removed? While you can attach them anywhere you like on the outside section, the biggest density was at an area which had been blessed by ‘The Bridal Mother’. Don’t ask me what that means 🙂
From atop the tower we saw this Ferris Wheel attached to a building, and since it was a short walk it became our next destination (although we of course had to detour into an impressive three-floor crane game center). The wheel is called the ‘Sky Boat’ and right now they’re having a collaboration with a K-pop band named NiziU.
I bought my ticket (only ¥600!) and when I got to the wheel I was asked which girl I wanted to ride with. Having never heard of the band I just took the next carriage which meant I experienced Sky Boat with Miihii!
This amounts to nothing really, although the carriage has a touchscreen in it on which you can watch a surprisingly large amount of NiziU music videos or recorded messages from the fans. The ride was smooth and slow and the views were fairly good for a wheel in the middle of a city, and I sat like a handsome gadabout in the company of the dulcet tunes of NiziU. (By the way, KLS hates Ferris Wheels so patiently waited below!)
That’s the view from the highest point of the wheel. You can see the Mirai Tower peeping above one of the buildings in the middle right.
For a country that doesn’t really celebrate Christmas, Japan loves Christmas displays. This monster tree is at the entrance of our hotel (which itself occupies 15 high floors of a skyscraper), and shops are full of all sorts of limited Christmas items as well, like this fetching black cat Santa outfit:
Or this pistachio tree-shaped mini cake KLS bought for dessert:
I’ll probably write more about Japanese Christmas in a few days…
I’ll end today with our hotel room view. At the bottom you can see the tracks of Nagoya Station, and every few minutes a bullet train speeds through. We’re over 20 stories up, and should have a beautiful sunset view if we’re in the room at the right time. The room is very comfortable and we’ll have fun in Nagoya these next few days 🙂
