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Nagoya[links] |
October 31 -November 1, 2000 |
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Even now, I'm not sure how we ended up staying two days in a place that we didn't enjoy...really at all. I guess we had planned on seeing some things, but it just didn't pan out. Perhaps hindsight is 20-20, and if we knew that this was the one place we would get lost in, we may have avoided it. It really didn't start off too badly...well, maybe it did. After a thoroughly nice time in Miyajima, we arrived in Nagoya, to find that a hotel was hard to come by. The place we found was a dive, and to make matters worse, we were kept up half the night by bikers (yes, motorcycles) riding around the streets. Actually, it seemed like they were riding around our hotel. Of course, one of us actually slept through most of it, but it's always the responsibility of the awake party to wake up the one who's sleeping through something annoying...hehehe. Finally, the noise stopped and we were both asleep...until we were awakened by an earthquake at 1:45am!!! So, though Alaska living had prepared us for earthquakes quite well, here we were, in Japan, on the fifth floor of a rickety building, and the place was a-rockin'! Thankfully, it was a short event (we found out later it was about a 5.0 magnitude quake), and I drifted back to sleep. Elaine had a bit more trouble, imagining aftershocks or bigger quakes, but finally drifted off, too. We had wanted to head to Takayama, but I couldn't get a hotel reservation to save my life. We didn't want to chance it, so we decided to just hang around Nagoya and see what was cookin. We had read about a little Australian place and decided to eat there for lunch. Of course, it didn't open until 6pm, so that was out. Fortunately, there was another option. At the same stop as the "Down Under" was a Hard Rock Cafe. Since neither of us had been to one before, we decided that we should go. It was an interesting sight that greeted us...no, an interesting person! He was taller than most Japanese, probably close to six feet tall, and wearing a shaggy, white dog costume. We were a little puzzled until we sat down and noticed the signs saying "Merry Halloween." Sure enough, it was October 31st. After lunch, we wandered in search of a hotel, but after finally giving up, we decided to try to go see the Tokugawa Art Museum. Sigh. I'll let Elaine explain:
Needless to say, by the time we got off the bus and walked to a train station (quite a trek), it was too late to get to the museum. Fortunately, it was a JR bus, so we didn't have to pay for that debacle. So, we headed back into town to find someplace to eat. For deenarrr (inside joke if you haven't read the Kotohira page), we went back to the "Down Under", which was now open. It's a little place in a basement, run by an Australian lady. Elaine had Sydney Shrimp in garlic sauce over rice and I had steak chili over rice. They were both quite good. The help were mostly young Japanese ladies, but their English was colored with Australian accents! That was quite hilarious to us. Unfortunately, after salvaging some fun experience from the day, we had to find another hotel. We found another dive. Okay, the place was decent enough, but it was right across the street from some kind of club, and the street noise was enough to drive us batty. Before I updated this page, I had a placeholder here. My summation for the visit was the following: "The motorcycles, then the earthquake. Then the street noise. It sucked." That just about sums it up. I must apologize for the lack of pictures on this page, but there just wasn't anything to photograph. Gladly departing Nagoya, taking a trip back in time...to Takayama... Nagoya Links: [ Main Page ] |
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 Okay, so the Hard Rock Cafe was kind of a fun experience, in an otherwise dreadful stay in what is allegedly a nice city. |
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