Nagoya #2: Ladies Who Brunch

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Woke up during the night freezing, put my cardi on and snuggled in my sleeping bag. My alarm went off around eight ish. There were a good few snoozes before I turned the alarm off. We managed to get up and out within an hour. The weather was pissing down outside so we left my stuff at home, and we headed out for breakfast. The area where Tash lives is so quiet. There wasn't a soul about and the roads were pretty dead, too. It was about a ten minute walk to the cafe.

The place we went to was called Komeda's cafe. It is an institution in Nagoya, I think it's been around for years and there are a few of them scattered around Nagoya. The cafe was heaving when we arrived and we had to wait about five minutes to be seated. It was really strange being in a cafe, where smoking is permitted, and the smoking section was easily twice the size of the non-smoking part. We were seated and had a look through the menu. We ordered some big ass coffees to perk us up. This cafe is amazing as when you order a coffee, it is like a kind of set and you get a thick wodge of hot buttery toast and a boiled egg to go with it. I was in heaven! You could have jam instead of the egg, but seriously, why would you! We ordered two different egg and ham sandwiches for our breakfast brunch. The food was really nice. One of the sandwiched was a sliced bread style with ham, egg mayonnaise and salad. It was like the ones that they sell in Paris Baguette, and was difficult to eat without the insides falling out. The other one was a big warm bun filled with egg mayo. It was lush, too! The cafe was full of old people, at first we were the youngest there by a good 30 years. But after a while a few families turned up. It was a lovely relaxing place and it was a good spot to people watch. I just had to have another coffee and was rewarded with another slice of toast.

The weather was still crappy when we left the cafe. We walked back to Tash's and picked up my stuff. We then headed to the subway and were off to do squeeze in a bit of sightseeing and shopping. We took the train to Osu, this is the area where loads of students hangout and I was hoping to see them dressed in their cosplay finest. The damp weather meant that there were many people about. But there was one lass on the subway done up like Little Bo Peep, she looked amazing!

We came out of the station and we were right beside Osu Kannon, the Buddhist temple. We wandered around the temple. The grounds weren't very big, but it was quite nice. I love the big pots by the temple doors with the incense burning in them. They also had some Buddha statues at the side f the staircase, which were wrapped in cloths like the ones we had seen in Kyoto.

We wandered out of the temple on the opposite side and there was Osu shopping arcade. It was nice because of the bad weather, it was quieter than it would of normally been. There was one shop that caught my eye, it was all very mysterious, you couldn't see into it, and there was a long queue outside. We think it was a jewelry shop, but we weren't a hundred percent sure. We wandered around some of the shops. There was a really nice store that sold girlie bits and bobs. We wandered off down a side street and fund a small Shinto shrine. It had the fox statues like Fushimi Inari. It was so pretty and peaceful.

We headed back into the shopping arcade. We looked at a couple of cosplay shops, I tried t take some sneaky photos, as they had big no photo signs. Then we went to look at the giant good luck cat. We popped into another shop, which was like a classier version of Diaso. Cheap prices, but better quality and nicer looking stuff. I bought a little cat charm fr my bag, t replace the one that came off yesterday at Gimpo. Time was ticking on and we headed for the subway and to the evil Nagoya station.

When we looked at the train times the first class express was due in about 15 minutes. Love it! First class, posh (ish) train fr less than a tenner. And the journey was only abut half an hour. The ride was quick, peaceful and smooth. I got to the airport around half two three ish. Chubu airport is great, big but quiet, and no huge queues. I went and checked in, had to prove that I reside legally in Korea. Normally it's on the way out they ask, not the return journey. I got through customs and immigration quickly, too. Since the whole process was so speedy I had lots of time to kill, which was spent chain smoking and having a late lunch.

The flight left on time and took about two hours I think. I was sitting next to two Japanese blokes, that were starving because as soon s we were up in the air, they were calling the air hostesses for food. They were gutted that none of the meals were available and they had to eat pringles. We landed in good time around sevenish. One of the perks of sitting right at the front of the plane, I was in the third row, was that I got off the plane really quickly. I gt through immigration and customs and made it out for the airport bus, by 7:25. Perfect because I thought it left at 7:30. What was even better was that the bus was meant to of left at 7:20. Someone was on my side, making the bus late to depart. All in all, a fab whirlwind weekend in Nagoya.

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