Downtown Nagoya

Cat-bus 

“Gai-koku-jin wa doko desu ka?” my friend called out, stomping into an izakaya in central Nagoya. He wasn’t even intoxicated at the time. I knew it was going to be a good weekend. I was heading down to Nagoya mainly to check out a Studio Ghibli exhibition in Lagunasia, a small resort park, and catch up with some close friends. I didn’t do a huge amount of sightseeing, but it was a fantastic weekend all the same.

I took the local train down rather than the Shinkansen bullet train, so it took me nearly five hours to get there. It was bearable – I rather enjoy train rides when I have travel companions or a book to read, though I was admittedly very happy to finally reach my destination long after sunset. It was about 9.30pm by the time I finally pulled into Nagoya, and my friends took me straight for tebasaki at a famous izakaya chain, Yama-chan. Tebasaki is the Japanese take on that most quinssental of sports game snack foods – chicken wings. From what I can tell on the Japanese Wikipedia entry, the creation of tebasaki was a happy accident in the 1960s, when a chicken restauranteur, Otsubo Kenko was experimenting with new seasonings. While the shop usually served whole chickens, using chicken wings was obviously easier for testing new flavours. Fortunately, customers liked it, and it grew in popularity.

This may or may not be what I looked like eating tebasaki! That, or it's another display at the Ghibli exhibition.

There were little cartoons on the wall demonstrating the “correct” way of eating chicken wings – admittedly a lot tidier than the stuff-it-in-your-mouth-anything-goes way that I, and the rest of the world employ. All you have to do is pull the chicken wing apart at the joint. The thinner, bonier point is put aside to be gnawed on later. Next, look for where the two bones join where you have just separated the wing. Pull them slightly apart. Pincering the other end firmly with your fingers, pop the half wing into your mouth, bite down, and pull the bones out! They’ll slip right off. It took me a couple of tries to get it right; mostly because I couldn’t eat the entire thing in one go. I did, however, eventually get it right, and am now no longer a bone-fide chicken wing eater. If you have no idea what I meant by all that, here’s a handy chart I found that gives you not one but four ways to eat chicken wings! Your life will never be the same again. The method I’m talking about is “D”.

Since the boys had only drunk to sensible levels, we grabbed another few beers from the combini and headed back to my friend’s apartment to make the most of the night (and the morning, really). There’s not much more to it than that, although some people didn’t feel their best the next day.

A train station we weren't supposed to be at... Psyduck looking pensively into the distance

 We made our way back to Nagoya the next morning and got on the train to Lagunasia, which is a small children’s theme park near Toyohashi, on the Eastern side of the prefecture. However, we had got onto an express train rather than a normal one, and managed to shoot pass the station where we needed to change trains. Now, normally, that wouldn’t really be worth mentioning. However, we were clever enough not just to do that once, but coming back the other way…. You guessed it. We missed it. Well. Done. Team. So, an hour’s journey stretched out a little longer than it should have, and we ended up arriving around 12.30pm.

The twilight zone

Lagunasia is about a twenty minute walk from the nearest station, or a ten minute bus ride, but the next bus wasn’t for an hour, so we took to the streets. We felt as though we had been bizarrely transported into another country as we walked towards the park. There were numerous palm trees lining incredibly wide roads, and the water features and high-rise condos were nothing like the buildings one normally sees in Japan. After traversing through the windy twilight zone, we arrived in a rather befuddled state, bemused that we had finally, finally got to our destination.

Lagunasia is essentially a children’s theme park, with a few tame roller coasters, a log flume and some water features. It’s not huge, but it’s probably a wonderland for anyone under fifteen! They currently have a special Studio Ghibli exhibition on (¥1,600, tickets can be bought from the Lawson Loppi machines in advance if you’re interested), so the moment you enter, a large statue of Ponyo riding the wave-fish greets you.

The Borrowers Arietty

We had a few more mishaps within the park that are perhaps better left unwritten (suffice to say it involved a phone and breaking down a pirate ship, and very sheepish gaijin apologies), but we eventually found our way to the main exhibit, and bumped into some friends in the queue. 

We waited about fifty minutes to get in, and then walked around inside to see all the displays. Apparently it’s been changed recently, so there are different statues and pictures to last year, but it was good all the same. They had some excellent scenarios on show, and we were able to take pictures with a lot of the exhibits.

After we wandered round the gift shop for ages and spent our money on useless but totally amazing things. Who needs a kodama with a vibrating head? We did. I don’t even know what to put it on (and as an aside, who thinks that kodama look like mushrooms? Well, the leap from kodama to kineko isn’t that far). We all got the same things, so we’re a trio of kineko carrying weirdos. We also ended up with a jingly Makkuro kurosuke (真っ黒黒助; "pitch-black assistant") phone charm each, as well as a badge.

Some of the people we’d met at the exhibition followed us back to Nagoya for dinner. We decided to go for more Aiichi specialties, this time miso-katsu, a breaded pork cutlet with a special miso sauce. The outlet we went to is particularly famous, knows as Yabaton. The have a number of shops around; we went to a multi-floor beauty in Yama-cho. It was pretty crowded – it took about half an hour to get us seated, with other hungry customers politely lining the stairs alongside us. The kitchen is tiny but ultra-efficient – one can peer in from the outside, and there were but four people working in there, one coating all the raw pork, another frying, one perhaps ferrying other things back and forth, and then the final chef plating the finished product.

The miso katsu was the best thing I ate in Nagoya, hands down. I have a terrible weakness for fried food, it’s too delicious to give up.

We then retired to a nomihoudai, the less said about that the better.

Allow me to distract you with some soot spirits

The next day, Psyduck and J took me to Osu. It’s a pretty modernized shopping district, but has a fascinating history. While it’s now home to a number of vintage stores and kebab shops (and an excellent karaage store - wander around, it will be the one with a queue miles long, near a bizarre Alice in Wonderland shop), it was already a flourishing district in the Edo period, so it’s continued its commercial ways for a while! I stopped briefly by Osu Kannon, a temple that’s stood there since 1612. It actually has an even longer history from 1324, but was moved to its current location in the early 17^th century. As with most temples and castles in Japan, it’s a reconstruction, but still impressive. There’s also a rabbit café in the area that we didn’t have time to visit, so… we dropped into a tiny little shop and shot cans with BBguns instead. It was a completely random find! Another must-see that I missed was the Nagoya planetarium. I didn’t have time to explore the area properly, but I know that I want to go back soon!

Bang!

In fact, I’ll be making an even longer trip next month down to explore Osaka and Kyoto! It’s well worth it, though; while I’ll be on the train for 7 hours or so, I’ll be using the seishun juu-hachi kippu, a ticket for the national train line that allows the ticket holder to travel as far as they like in a day. It can be used five times, and is valid from the first of March to the tenth of April this spring. It’s ¥11,500 for a ticket, so each trip costs you ¥2,300 – it’s a very decent deal! You can also use it in tandem with others, as long as you’re travelling together, so if you’re in Japan and wanting to travel, now is the time to do so!

Quizu out~