Last Days with Jeremy
Yesterday we had a great day in Nagoya. Nagoya is Japan's 4th largest city and was the site of the 2005 World Expo. Since holding the Expo, Nagoya has apparently boomed and become an up and coming world city. I was pretty impressed by it. It was clearly a modern city with inovative architecture and many many people. But there were also neighborhoods with 150 year old stores and homes where you could imagine walking the streets with samurai.
We met an acquantince of Jeremy's at lunch time in Nagoya. She was a wonderful older lady who lives in Nagoya but is originally from the area of Japan where I used to live and Jeremy still does. She took us to a place for lunch that served a regional dish called miso katsu which was fried pork cutlet covered in slightly sweet red miso paste. It was great! We then walked through the streets of Nagoya until we arrived at the grand Nagoya castle. Unfortunately most of the original castle and the grounds was destroyed in WWII. But the reconstruction is perfect. The cherry blossoms were beautiful and the museum inside the reconstructed castle was really good. This was the most impressive castle grounds I have been to and it was really crowded!
After that we went to the main downtown area called Sakae and said goodbye to Jeremy's friend and had dinner. It was only an hour away from Kani by train and was a fun day. There is so much to do there that I am sure we will be back many times.
Today was a bit cloudy but we decided to hop in the car and see if we could find a local mountiain that has a hiking trail that goes up to a look out point to look over the city and the mountains. When we got there there were many cars and people even directing traffic! It was such a small little area and we couldn't figure out why all those people were there. Were they all there to climb the hill? We parked and then asked what was going on. It happened that this is the season for these locally famous tiny purple flowers that come out for a short time and are quite pretty. There were many people there oohhing and aahhing and taking pictures of them! Japanese really love flowers! The trail up the mountain was way steep and showed Damien and I how out of shape we were. We really were demoralized when a man in his 60s passed us while jogging up the mountain!!! Anyway, at the top the view was amazing. We ate a picnic lunch and just enjoyed the view.
Checking out a new shopping center, going home and discussing world events and eating dinner at a restaurant across from our apartment took up the rest of our time.
We will be sad to see Jeremy go back tomorrow but are happy that our vacation time was the same so he could visit this week. We start teaching our classes on Tuesday!!!
We met an acquantince of Jeremy's at lunch time in Nagoya. She was a wonderful older lady who lives in Nagoya but is originally from the area of Japan where I used to live and Jeremy still does. She took us to a place for lunch that served a regional dish called miso katsu which was fried pork cutlet covered in slightly sweet red miso paste. It was great! We then walked through the streets of Nagoya until we arrived at the grand Nagoya castle. Unfortunately most of the original castle and the grounds was destroyed in WWII. But the reconstruction is perfect. The cherry blossoms were beautiful and the museum inside the reconstructed castle was really good. This was the most impressive castle grounds I have been to and it was really crowded!
After that we went to the main downtown area called Sakae and said goodbye to Jeremy's friend and had dinner. It was only an hour away from Kani by train and was a fun day. There is so much to do there that I am sure we will be back many times.
Today was a bit cloudy but we decided to hop in the car and see if we could find a local mountiain that has a hiking trail that goes up to a look out point to look over the city and the mountains. When we got there there were many cars and people even directing traffic! It was such a small little area and we couldn't figure out why all those people were there. Were they all there to climb the hill? We parked and then asked what was going on. It happened that this is the season for these locally famous tiny purple flowers that come out for a short time and are quite pretty. There were many people there oohhing and aahhing and taking pictures of them! Japanese really love flowers! The trail up the mountain was way steep and showed Damien and I how out of shape we were. We really were demoralized when a man in his 60s passed us while jogging up the mountain!!! Anyway, at the top the view was amazing. We ate a picnic lunch and just enjoyed the view.
Checking out a new shopping center, going home and discussing world events and eating dinner at a restaurant across from our apartment took up the rest of our time.
We will be sad to see Jeremy go back tomorrow but are happy that our vacation time was the same so he could visit this week. We start teaching our classes on Tuesday!!!
posted by Ana | 5:22 AM
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