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New building in Nagoya
Looks like it's going to like the London 'gherkin' Well, time to leave Kyoto and after our grateful thanks were offered to our fantastic hosts at the ryokan, we headed for the station for the hour long trip to Nagoya.
Nagoya was totally flattened in the Second World War and has become a smaller, more relaxed version of Tokyo. We decided, after finally finding our hotel, to visit Nagoya Port, not knowing what to expect. When we got there it was bustling family area, with a huge aquarium centre at its heart.
We visited the centre and found that it included a dolphinarium and performances from both the dolphins and a killer whale. At this point both our consciouses kicked in about exactly how we felt about the performances and the ethics of it all. However, we decided that firstly a killer whale wouldn't exactly do something it didn't want to and second in Japan, surely the prospects of this whale are better in the aquarium pool than they would be out at sea.
The show was after all that rather good and the speed and agility of both the whale and the dolphins was phenomenal, as was the wake the whale left in the water.
Triple decker road!
The roads are so busy in Nagoya that they need three lanes of traffic on top of each other! We expect some flack for visiting such an event, but it would still have happened if we were there or not and it was good to see that the animals were well cared for and given a large area to live in.
After the show we went through the rest of the aquarium, seeing something of the creatures from the waters around Japan - it was an interesting change from temples!
Leaving the Aquarium behind we moved on to the Big Wheel on the harbour's edge. It was very high, very slow moving and it suddenly got VERY windy. Anthony (poor love) was quite simply crapping himself all the way around and didn't open his eyes after thirty seconds in. I must admit that the way the car shook left and right, forward and back at the top of the wheel was rather disconcerting.
After that we returned to the centre of Nagoya for dinner, which was cooked on a hotplate right in front of us. Beef noodles wrapped in an omlette - very tasty, very filling and a challenge to eat with chopsticks.
Nagoya was a great change from Kyoto and a really nice city.
Nagoya Station Building
Where else would you get a 55 storey railway station building, with helipad? Tomorrow its off to Takayama in the Japanese Alps - yet another change and a real experience of the countryside. Dewa mata!
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anonymous
non-member comment
I was here in 1999
Just reminded me of my 3-week study trip to Nagoya. Not busy compare to Tokyo. Regards. rey