Nagoya

So here I am in Nagoya. Like I said before, Nagoya reminds me a little of Kobe for some reason, and I quite liked Kobe, so that's no bad thing.

I've decided to stay here a couple more nights if I can, rather than moving on to Nara. There's more I want to see here and in the surrounding areas, and accomodation in Nara is hard to come by right now, so I'm going to try a couple of days there when I get back from Okinawa. The temples and parks in Nara may then coincide with the sakura (cherry blossom) season which would surely be quite spectacular.

What does Nagoya have to offer? There's a very attractive castle (sadly a replica, since the original was entirely levelled in 1945) with some very nice gardens, plenty of temples and shrines, a couple of decent parks (although one appears to have a fairly large homeless population - a side of Japan arguably not often seen), some decent opportunities to pick up some traditional items to send back home (and for sub-Tokyo prices, too), and some smaller attractions in outlying areas. Not a bad place to kill a few days.

Also of note is one of the largest 'gaijin bars' in the country, which I found quite by accident - it's a great place to find out information about the area, and to meet people with some grasp on the English language, too. I ended up making two good friends there last night - an ex-university student from Manchester, UK now living here with her Japanese boyfriend. This afternoon I went for a delicious tonkatsu lunch (tonkastsu is a breaded pork cutlet usually served with rice, miso soup, etc - Nagoya tonkatsu is served with a dark miso sauce quite unlike anywhere else, making it something of a local specialty) with them, and although she had to run to work afterwards, her boyfriend took my round the Osu area of Nagoya and gave me a good insight into day-to-day Japanese life. Oh, and I found out about a Japanese university scholarship (the MEXT Scholarship) which is, for me, well worth looking into.

Anyway, I need to run to see what appears to be some strange march (complete with what sounds like chanting monks) outside my hotel.

James