We headed down to Nagoya this weekend to visit Denise’s friend from college, Misako and her family. Nagoya is located about halfway between Yokohama and Kyoto. We took the bullet train from Yokohama to Nagoya. We were on the slow bullet train, so it took us 2.5 hours to get there. The slow bullet train still goes fast, but it makes more stops along the way.
Misako and her husband David found us at the Nagoya train station. Unfortunately, Misako injured her ankle going down the steps to get to the train station, so she was limping. We took a taxi cab to get some of the famous Nagoya chicken wings called Tebasaki. They are salty and spicy chicken wings that are very tasty and some of the best chicken wings I have ever had. We went to a place called Yamachan which is a chain restaurant. The one we went to was about 5 buildings down from another one and about 3 blocks down from another one, but it was still busy. We had our chicken wings, beer, and chu-hi. Yummy…yummy…yummy. I had a Japanese wheat beer which was almost as good as home.
We stayed at Misako and David’s house in Kasugai which is a suburb north of Nagoya. Nagoya is the fourth largest city in Japan, so it is quite spread out. Their house was a four bedroom traditional Japanese house. We stayed in the tatami room on the first floor sleeping on some futons under lots of blankets to keep warm. You have to be tough to live in a Japanese house because they don’t have central heating and their houses are not well insulated.
(Saturday, March 7)
This morning we got up and had breakfast and then headed over to Misako’s parents house. Their two daughters were staying with the grandparents the night before, but we were all going to head out to do some strawberry picking. I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. It took about 1 hour to drive out to the strawberry picking area going through multiple toll roads. It costs us about 1500 yen ($15) to drive out to the strawberry picking area. In Japan their roads are maintained through tolls, so those that don’t drive don’t have to pay to maintain the roads. I think it is much easier to take public transit than drive.
The strawberry picking area was a huge indoor greenhouse with rows upon rows of strawberry plants. The strawberry plants were raised up about 4 feet and the strawberries were hanging down from there. They gave us a row to pick and eat as many strawberries as we wanted. They gave us some condensed milk to dip the strawberries in, but I thought it tasted better just plain. Misako’s dad is a botanist, so he was trying to show and tell us how to pick the best strawberry. It was a lot of fun with the kids and we ate a lot of strawberries.
After picking strawberries we headed to the beach near Tokoname on the Chita Peninsula. The beach was beautiful and overlooked upon the Ise Bay. We watched a wind surfer play around for a little while in the water. Across from the beach was a sake museum that we checked out. The museum was dedicated to Akio Morita who was the founder of Sony. His family was big into the sake business since the 1600s, but he went on to found Sony. We tried a few different sakes, but I am still not much of a fan.
We drove back and had dinner at a Korean BBQ joint where we ate intestines, cow tongue, and other random meats. The cow tongue was okay, but the intestines were too chewy. The Korean BBQ place has a grill at your table that you cook your own food on. It is a lot of fun.
After dinner we stopped by Ichiro’s parent’s house and their adjoining museum. It was not open since it was dark, but it was really cool to see where Ichiro grew up. Of course, his parent’s house has probably been remodeled since he lived there, but it was still neat. Ichiro is from the same town that Misako and David live in. Misako had a cousin or cousin’s friend that went to high school with Ichiro. We use Ichiro’s name whenever Japanese people ask us where we are from since they recognize him and the Seattle Mariners.
(Sunday, March 8)
We started out this morning by going to have a famous Nagoya breakfast set at a Bali themed restaurant. You pay the price of a drink and get a breakfast set that included a mini sandwich, salad, and potato salad. It was very tasty and only costs 400 yen ($4) which was the price of the Mango juice I got. The restaurant was really cool because it was spread out in an open dining room setting with a waterfall outside. Afterwards, we headed to the Bali themed store that had souvenirs from Bali, but we held out since we plan on getting a lot of souvenirs in Thailand.
After breakfast Misako, David and the kids dropped us off at a train station near their house, so we could head back to Nagoya. We took the train to Nagoya to check out the Nagoya castle. The Nagoya castle was a neat castle, but its biggest draw was the museum artifacts inside like swords, golden dolphins, armor, etc. The castle burned down during WWII, but has since been rebuilt using concrete. A lot of Japanese castles have been rebuilt using concrete due to the overwhelming problem of wood burning. The castle grounds were neat. We rushed to catch a subway back to the train station and then catch our bullet train ride home.
We were hoping to check out the Toyota show room in Nagoya, but we ran out of time. The Toyota factory and headquarters are in the Nagoya area. The Toyota factory requires you to make a reservation up to 2 weeks in advance, but we did not realize this until a few days before our trip. We had a lot of fun hanging out with Misako, David, Hana, and Maya over the weekend.
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