How was Nagoya
you ask?
Well, first off, thanks for asking and secondly, it was
quite nice.
My friend Alicia and I grabbed the express Kintetsu Urban Liner from Namba to Nagoya which
runs every thirty minutes, takes about two hours, and saves you maybe up to
¥1500 each way by not taking a JR Shinkansen
train which gets you there in under an hour. We arrived in Nagoya around 11am and met our friends at the
station.
From there an early lunch since they had to work that
afternoon. Sadly we did not partake of Nagoya’s
famous miso katsu or kishimen noodles but rather an Indian
curry buffet(!) full of delicious naan. Hey, when with the natives do what the
natives do and that’s where they wanted to go – who was I to complain? Wait,
scratch that. I most assuredly wasn’t complaining. It definitely was no where
near the typical Nagoya cuisine but it was quite
good, run by actual Indians from India who spoke passably good
English, and there was refill after refill of fresh naan on our table. By the
time that was over we all were groaning with the effort to do anything but sit
fatly in our seats.
With the food out of the way Alicia and I – in true Japanese
fashion – decided where to go with a simple janken
(rock-paper-scissors) game. And we were off to Atsuta Shrine, a very famous
shrine in Nagoya
that houses one of the three magic items
of doom in typical anime fashion.
Ok, joking aside, it is the second most venerable Shinto shrine in Japan behind Ise Shrine because it houses the Kusanagi no Tsurugi, a legendary sword
that is one of the three Imperial regalia of Japan along with a mirror at Ise Shrine and a jewel at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. This sword has a shadowy existence
in that it cannot even be accurately confirmed to be real so, no, quite
unfortunately we could not get a glimpse of the legendary artifact. The only
people who can lay eyes on it are the most senior of priests and the emperor
himself, if it even truly exists.
So we found ourselves with time on our hands and a lovely
shrine standing before us. In more typical Japanese fashion we followed the
Japanese people in front of us and headed straight to the purified water to
“cleanse” ourselves as they were doing. Amidst this procedure an older Japanese
man came up to us to say “no, no that’s not the correct way to do it – you wash
your hands on the way out!” He even
said it in quite passable English. We thanked him politely as he walked off and
then proceeded to get lost in the maze of the shrine roads. The same man came
hurrying back with maps of the shrine and dedicated himself as our guide, as he
works (volunteers?) there part-time by helping keep the shrine in clean orderly
condition. He then raced us all over the
shrine from the Oda Nobunaga wall to the each of the mini-shrines giving us
information all the while from what the wall was made of to what each shrine
was dedicated to as well as why some shrines are painted red (there’s insect
repellent in it to keep the bugs from eating the wood – and, he said, ‘it looks
rather nice, doesn’t it?’). After a thorough walk from one end of the shrine to
the other our rather nice tour guide looked at his watch and abruptly proclaimed that he
had to leave to have tea with his wife and zipped off without another word. A
little bit strange, but he was a very nice old man. We were certainly glad for
the help, the tour, the random info he threw at us, and the maps he procured.
This is the Japan
that I love!
With still more time to spare and rain starting to drizzle
down, our next sightseeing spot was out of the outdoors and into a building –
the famous Nagoya Castle replica –
replica because the original was an army headquarters in WWII and was burned
down in an air raid. Getting to the castle was a bit frustrating though as it
wasn’t super close to the train station – close enough to see but far enough to
get soaking wet on the walk over as neither of us had umbrellas on hand. We made
it inside and I was surprised to see how much it reminded me of Osaka Castle.
While I am sure there are many, many differences I could see very similar
architecture in quite a few places, similar paintings and drawings inside,
similar katana and wakazashi blades, as well as similar
replicas of the castle in times long past. I did like posing atop the huge
golden carp-looking fish-dragon – er, I mean “dolphin” – they had for posing,
similar to other “dolphin” motifs around the castle – also similar to Osaka
Castle.
Braving the now-pouring rain we headed back to the train
station for the real reason we came
to Nagoya – the
Gackt concert of which I blogged about in my previous entry. Lovely, lovely
show. I was quite happy I went – not only for the show but also to get a quick
glimpse of beautiful Nagoya.
And with that I wish you a wonderful night and I hope your setsubun, or Bean Throwing Day, was
eventful. Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi! Out foul demons!! In good luck!
