2 November 2024
Not underground but still undercover
Oso Shotengai
When I was last at Oso Shotengai in 2015, I took a great photo of myself wearing a dress. I looked tonight for the thing you stick your head through to appear as though you are wearing a maid outfit, but it was gone.
Oso is east of the modern shopping area with the department stores (which I have not yet been to on this visit to Nagoya). It is a large covered shopping area forming a H pattern of undercover streets. There are a lot of restaurants, but also a huge number of vintage clothing shops, plus what I think is an emerging area of nerdy collectables shops. So if you are hungry, feel like putting on soiled clothing and then buying a weird half naked doll, this is your place.
I walked up and down the whole area and much of it was surprisingly busy, with relatively few closed garage doors. So perhaps there is some hope for the survival of Nagoya - the boring city.
Also there was no rain this evening, the forecast was absolutely correct to the hour again, it said no more rain from 5pm, and that was correct, a prediction I first took note of 2 days ago.
Tomorrow is a hiking day, a repeat of a 2015 hike.
Tonight's highway overpass photo is of clearing skies. Handheld 1/4 of a second photo because the bridge bounces up and down as people walk on it.
Here is the temple near the start of the Oso shopping area. I took a similar photo last time just before my dress photo. 0.4 seconds handheld for this one, note the blurry person walking.
Time to head undercover, above ground.
Even the crossing streets have little rain covers.
This area has a large number of Italian restaurants. I briefly considered pizza, probably should have had pizza.
OK last one of these. It is a nice area though. I remembered the curry shop I ate at last time but that appears to be gone and replaced with a trading card shop.
I thought this was just rubbish made to look like art in the middle of a bunch of small shops selling second hand electronics. But then I noticed a small man in the middle of this pile of garbage messing around with a soldering iron and a magnifying glass, de-soldering things from motherboards. It remains unclear if he is actually selling anything, or if the stores just let him occupy this spot in the middle of everything to enjoy his hoarding.
There is a very minor car accident behind me causing the street to be blocked. The police were not keen on anyone taking a photo of that, so instead here is a photo of a police car. They all have those cantilever extending lights on the roof, which are still lower than the height of the average SUV and therefore useless.
And so for my dinner, HAMBURG! It was a strange restaurant, very old fashioned, menus looked like they were from 1970. A huge number of chefs grilling hamburgers for the 10 or so customers. It was a bit pricey ($12) for what it was, I should have got the set meal, although I suspect that came with booze so that would have been a waste.
Now to figure out my trains for tomorrow morning, one of the lines is cash only!