Day 8: nagoya

*back dated entry*

today we shifted to nagoya cause it will be our pitch stop to takayama & shirakawago!!!! i didnt expect much from nagoya since we wont have much time there.... from mishima, it took 2hr train ride to reach nagoya & i chose daiichi fuji hotel which was about 5min+ walk from station....

daiichi fuji hotel

room

toilet

the room was really small, could hardly opened our luggage but the price was really cheap, if i didnt remember wrongly, it cost like 65SGD/night so just make do with it.... after that we went to get lunch around station area.... so nagoya station had this underground shopping mall, quite good... it had quite a large variety of stuff & lots of food choices too....

hubby lunch

my lunch

at the top right corner of my lunch, you will see this white pastey stuff... i also not very sure what was that but i assumed it was like mashed yam or something... it actually tasted not too bad when you mixed it with rice & it was a popular dish in the restaurant..... after lunch, we went to our first destination = nagoya castle

some building outside nagoya castle

nagoya castle

this is japanese interpretation of dolphin in the ancient time

can see from the photos that nagoya castle was much bigger than matsumoto castle, it had much more exhibits.... i think they build a replicate of the castle which was much taller & could accommodate a bigger museum.... but i guess most of the castles  in japan looked pretty much the same, the difference lie in the surrounding.... so on top of the museum, they had this souvenir coin engraving machine which we were so amazed by it...

coin engraving machine

souvenir coin

the computer looked really ancient but it's still working fine.... it cost 30yen to do engraving so i think it's pretty worthwhile to try it =)

after the castle, we went to sakae area which was supposed to be the heart of nagoya...

nagoya tv tower

so there it has nagoya tv tower & some shopping centers... it's somewhat like orchard road, purely shopping so nothing interest us & we left after walking for a short while.... our last destination was osu kannon

area outside the shrine

osu kannon

osu kannon shopping street

interesting accessory shop with super small entrance

osu kannon is THE shrine in nagoya but since we went to so many shrines already, we didnt go in but just took afew pictures outside... next to the shrine is the shopping street & WOAH... the shopping area is HUGE!!! it actually connect several streets so there were lots of shops there... if i am not wrong, this is the place where world cosplay game is held annually.... i enjoy walking around these kind of shopping streets as they sell more interesting items compare to shopping centers....

after osu kannon, we went back to hotel area to have our dinner at sukiya!!! FINALLY!!! after 1wk in japan, we finally found sukiya!!! FYI, sukiya is like yoshinoya but it sell a wider variety of beef bowls...

triple cheese beef bowl

hamburger steak with curry rice

the triple cheese beef bowl is a new addition to the menu & it was super yummy!!!! personally i didnt really like nagoya, i find it abit boring but perhaps we didnt spend enough time to explore the place.... but we were looking forward to tomorrow cause it's another highlight of this trip = travel to the much anticipated shirakawago!!! saw so many nice pictures on facebook & finally we get the chance to see it for ourselves =)