Nagoya

A fun start to the day. I couldn’t have breakfast at the Hotel Fukinomori as they only offer 8am and 8:30am as breakfast times. Well they thought I should take a taxi at 8am to start my odyssey to Nagoya. Taxi came a bit early and I was early enough at Nagiso Station to catch an earlier train than what the plan said.

I changed trains at Nakatsugawa and it seemed like I had two train tickets, one from Nakatsugawa to Nagoya. So I left the station at Nakatsugawa in search of breakfast. I would have settled for a Macdonalds but the best I could so was egg sandwich Snickers bar and carton of orange juice at a nearby Seven Eleven. Outside the station I couldn’t find a rubbish bin either.

Trying to re-enter the station to catch the train to Nagoya revealed that I didn’t have two train tickets, I had just one and the other thing was seating for the Limited Express to Nagoya. The very kind station staff hunted through the tickets collected at the barrier and luckily found the one I had erroneously disposed of! The Nagoya train was running 4 minutes late, for Japan that may be worthy of comment. In the UK that would be considered great time-keeping.

If I hadn’t wrongly left the station I would have been starving by the time we reached Nagoya.

The Toyota Commemorative Museum was well worth seeing, I didn’t know Toyota had their start with weaving machines. I may have known and forgotten that Toyota write their name now using Katakana as it’s fewer strokes. There was a lot to see there. Some large active machines which I worried about being dangerous like a mechanical loom or vehicle metal press.

There wasn’t as much to see at the Noritake Gardens or else I failed to find it to see. One Christmas slogan read “Blooming Christmas” which would mean something else in the UK.

Managed to check into the Marriott Associa again earlier than 3pm I’ve ended up with room 2516 whereas I had room 2615 at the Hotel Groove! My luggage did arrive here safely I was glad to see! As did tickets for Ghibli Park.

Toyota Commemorative Museum entrance

Lunch in the cafe there

Museum exhibits

Noritake Garden