3 November 2024
The backside of Nagoya
Piago in Nakamura Ward
I do not think I have ever been west of the station in Nagoya, not this visit and not on my last visit. So tonight I decided to go there.
This required going through the station, which was ridiculously busy, and made all the more busier by lines of hundreds of people lined up at 4 or more locations to buy a tiny duck cake. I could not really get close enough to take a photo of it, and there were posters all over the station advertising it. I predict each one cost more than my dinner. Am I missing out? Probably.
You only have to go 2 or 3 blocks away from Nagoya station on the west side until you are into regular cheap mid density housing. There are not a lot of shops around, and the restaurants were of the kind that probably do not want me going in. Eventually I got to a spot on google maps that had a live 'busy area' label, and at that area was a Piago store. Basically a cheaper older version of Walmart / Carrefour. I had a good look around and used their free bathrooms, before heading back outside and realising the busy area label on the map is probably for a more salacious reason.
Here are the towers over the station. I remember them as having blue lights. They do not. I do remember they are this weird grey colour that somehow seems more greyer at night.
This is a girl playing the free piano under the station. We have similar pianos in Australia. Big deal. But there is a line full of people waiting for their turn. Most of them have tripods and expensive looking cameras. So it seems the thing to do in Nagoya is film yourself playing the piano in the station.
This is right opposite the Piago variety store in Nakamura. It is a soapland. A soapland is a brothel - with Japanese characteristics. There are a lot of similar establishments nearby. The fact that I have typed 'soapland' here means that this photo will get linked more times by other websites than every other photo of this trip combined. So consider this clickbait.
Inside Piago and everything is slightly yellowed. I think a lot of the stock is many years old.
I love a sad food court, and this place had one. There are a couple more choices around the corner, but they were all slightly too cheap for comfort. Yes, too cheap even for me.
The back streets around here were very interesting. Many shops such as this with furniture placed on the street on a Sunday night.
I was still looking for dinner. Denny's? Research suggests you need to be drunk. Tonight I learned this is also now owned by Japanese 7-eleven holdings, and will therefore soon be owned by Canadian megacorp Couche-Tard.
I know you can get pepper lunch in Australia, but I could not resist. Plus it comes with more vegetables and is half the price I would pay at home. It was actually delicious. I also observed that Japanese people do not seem to stir it all up, but rather delicately cook each ingredient individually. I think this is very wrong, perhaps all the people sitting near me were on their first ever visit and I am the expert?
Japanese people take karaoke seriously, this building is all karaoke, all the time.
And for my final shot this evening, my snack that I consume while typing this. Chocolate covered potato sticks and pink grapefruit lemonade that is yellow.
Tomorrow is not a hiking day, but the two after it probably are!