Visiting Nagoya castle and the Chrysanthemum displays
Today I did the touristy thing and went to Nagoya Castle.
It is newly constructed, and still under construction, I took great care to ensure I hid the photos of the cranes, sheds, giant sheets of plastic, men in space uniforms waving orange sticks.
Why is every Japanese castle under construction at all times? I have a new theory.
This castle in Nagoya is identical to the one down the road in Osaka. I believe they are one and the same. Even the inside has the same art gallery stuff to see.
So I am here to tell you that the Osaka castle has been relocated to Nagoya, or 50% of it is in each location permanently under construction.
The view from the top is great, all I could see was mountains in every direction. But you cant stay there for long, as my mother has noted, it is heated to about 40C at all times.
If you have been inside any Japanese castle, you will know theres 2 staircases, one to go up and one to go down. DO NOT GO DOWN THE UP STAIR CASE.
I saw some German tourists do this today, and the amount of panicked yelling in Japanese was hilarious. A small female guard was running whilst on the walky talky, yelling and bowing all at once to try and regain control of the situation.
The local NTT Docomo building needs a lot of antennas, so they stacked a heap of platforms on top of each other to make a delicious earthquake platform sandwich.
I passed city hall on the way to the castle, which of course had a few vans with huge speakers out the front screaming obscene political messages.
There is something about the way the commentators speak when they do this, I think they are mocking politicians by deliberately speaking as if they have mental issues. They change the pitch of their over a huge range of octaves and deliberately stutter.
It is hugely annoying and can generally be heard all over every Japanese city at all times.
The moat around the castle has no water.
Instead its full of plastic bags of rubbish. Welcome to landfill castle, 500 yen entry.
I guess the cleaners just lob bags over the wall.
There is of course a flower show on, and WHAT A FLOWER SHOW. I looked at this for longer than the castle.
I was amazed by these bonsai flower things.
So much so that I kept taking pictures.
I thought I better include the castle also.
One more particularly amazing example. I will be pissed off if I find out its an old log with flowers glued to it.
Castle time.
There are people everywhere ensuring you do not sit down. They have a few decoy chairs and benches around to see if you dare ignore the sign.
I hung around for a while to see if anyone was stupid enough to do so, but no one was.
These are the famous Osaka fish, now in Nagoya.
The view from the top was great, lots of color, very clear day.
And so many mountains.
Last one of the castle.
Except for the deer swimming in the moat. Yes, Nagoya has deer in the centre of the city.
This samurai guy is wearing a smurf hat and eating an ice cream. Thats worth a photo.
Someones wedged a ball in the street.
Homeless people here have elaborate set ups. You can pay for a tour of their pile of crap, but I was out of 100 yen coins.
Lunch was a delicious vegetable curry, apparently distinct from the others due to it being Kanazawa style. It was identical to all others, which means it was great.
And heres a post box. Somehow it doesnt get vandalized.
The covered shopping streets of Oso in Nagoya
I found the covered pedestrian area of Nagoya, so it does exist.
It is further South of the big department stores and is called Oso.
It is largely second hand shops, which I thought was fantastic, old toys, cameras, electronics, guitars, but also clothes, bikes, swords, shoe horns and tooth brushes.
It seems to be more of a day time area, as a lot of stores close at 6pm, including strangely the restaurants.
You must however, be careful of bikes, they come from anywhere, at top speed, they dont care that its a pedestrian mall. I nearly got run over twice, but someone else got hit and then yelled at the guy who hit him who ran off wheeling his bike.
Since most of the eating places were closed or closing, I retreated to top floor of department stores for dinner, Mitzukoshi had the best selection, but also the highest prices. Often the price wasnt clear and there was no choice but to buy the set meal with all kinds of stuff no one wants to double the price.
For whatever reason, Japanese restaurants are showing part of the price in Chinese (they presumably share numbers with Japan). Now I can read this, but I dont really understand why they dont show the whole price using the characters, perhaps Japanese people dont know the character for one thousand?
My long march home went through the park in the middle of the road, where I got to see lots of small dogs, really bad skate boarders, pop star dancing idol practice, homeless people city, an area closed off by police, and strangely, blind people painting.
There was a bunch of what I am sure were blind people having the scene described to them as they painted squiggles onto their easel.
On my way to Oso I went past an entire street of xmas decoration shops. Litreally 20 stores in a row. What do they do the rest of the year?
Perhaps xmas is year round in Japan now.
The temple suggested the start of shopping streets.
Wherever theres a temple, its to pray for a bargain.
Theres a network of 4 or 5 covered mall areas.
I tried on a maid outfit.
Then I waved at the giant cat for a while, whilst smoking teenagers got uncomfortable by my presence and left.
Crazy cyclists.
This second hand guitar shop was awesome. Its a shame I dont need or want anything.
I wasnt particularly hungry, so ordered what appeared to be a small meal in the plastic window version.
It was however quite large, and came with some flower petals, clear noodles that may have been potato or possibly tapeworms, and 3 green beans. Perhaps they are magic beans.