SY Sari Timur: Nagoya

We have now been able to update the pictures from the older posts. They may need a little tweaking but worth a visit backward. We added a lot of pictures especially to the post on Kyoto. Now it is time to add a few more posts and pictures of events that have already happened that we didn't have time or internet to get them on here. One of those stops was Nagoya.

After Tajimi, Bill and Martha had a side trip planned and Chris had to go back to work. So we found ourselves with a couple of extra days on our road trip and it was off to Nagoya. Chris had to travel through Nagoya on his way home so he lead us to the Y-Market Brewery in Nagoya for one or three before he caught his train and we went to our hotel.

We picked Nagoya as a stop as we had a friend here, Isao-san, who we met in Guam and who was one of the original Setouchi rally organizers. He was not able to join the rally this year as his wife had just been diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing treatment. During the rally we also met another couple from Nagoya, who was cruising on his boat through Guam at the same time. We never really met at that time but Cho-san and his wife Kayo were a joy to have on the rally this year. So it would allow us to have a chance to catch up. We thought this would only be a brief visit of a drink or maybe dinner but we had almost a full day and a half with them, starting with the Noritake museum which we already posted. They are very interesting people and we could probably post a whole blog just on them but we are going to just concentrate on our visit.

After Cho-san and Kayo took us to the Noritake Museum we met up with Isao and headed off to an upmarket Izakaya type restaurant. Izakayas are usually small bar type restaurants that serve special types of simple foods, this one specialized in perfecting all of these foods and was of course a larger restaurant. We had a great evening eating, drinking, catching up and made some plans for the next day. We got back to our hotel fairly late and Pauline was checking her Facebook only to find she had a childhood friend spending the night in Nagoya as well. We didn't have a chance to meet up but did get to talk on the phone.

The next day started early and we headed to Nagoya Castle and the Hommaru Palace. This is a restoration of the original which was built in 1615 but was bombed during WW2. The castle was rebuilt quite a few years ago but the restoration of the palace is still going on. It was only opened in May 2013 and we also got to see how they are building one of the the wings of the palace. One of the best known items of the Nagoya castle is the Golden Dolphins which sit on the roof. These look more like a mythical creature which is more of a cross between a carp and a dragon.

This trip alone was half a day of exploring and it tired us out but then we were off to see another park which is probably off the radar of most traveler's visits. This is Meiji-Mura and well worth the visit. Meiji-Mura is an open air museum where a lot of the buildings from the Meiji period were brought and rebuilt. These buildings were being torn down for development in the original locations but were thought to be too important to lose. There are over 60 historical buildings on the grounds. One of the highlights is the original main entrance hall and lobby of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. This hotel was one of the masterpieces designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.