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A view out onto the city from the top level of the Nagoya Castle. I liked the juxtaposition of the old, or at least old-looking, with the modern architecture in the distance. You can get a somewhat larger version of this image, or a much larger. |
Friday, 23 May: Nagoya
Today in Ōfuna, the breakfast was somewhat different, but delightfully so, with a whole kipper as the fish component. Then off to the railroad station, to catch an early train to Odawara, from which we picked up a bullet train to Nagoya. My journal says:
«The city is busy and industrial-looking, and we had only a little trouble finding our hotel, the businessman’s minimal kind, but the staff was wonderfully attentive and helpful. We got an all-day pass for a tourist bus that could take us to the Noritake Garden, where the attractive aspect is a high-end restaurant serving its food on Noritake dinnerware; to the Toyota Museum of Industry; to Nagoya Castle; and to the Tokugawa Art Museum. Our Mike-set agenda was to get to all of these but the Toyota Museum.
«First stop was Noritake Garden, and there was a café right off the showroom where you could buy things of all possible qualities, but this was not the restaurant. We did find what we wanted, the Restaurant Kiln, and it was indeed elegant.
«We split up, withe the Moorman-Kings going to one of the museums in the [Noritake] complex, while we looked around the showroom. [I was hoping to find something purchasable, but not a single thing appealed to me.] We waited for the others to come back, but they were delayed, and we missed the bus we were planning to take to the Castle. The M-Ks hopped into a cab, but instead of us doing the same thing, we walked around the Gardens proper, which were not distinguished in any particular way except that many of the trees had botanical labels.
«There was one aspect of the Garden that caught our eye—on the reverse side of a wall dedicated to people who had contributed to the construction of the Garden, there was a row of small ceramic sculptures, some very appealing. I said later that one could imagine that they were student pieces—in spirit they reminded me of such works that we saw at exhibitions at RISD.
«So we were a half-hour behind the M-Ks in our arrival at the Castle, and as it happened, as we went in, they were going out, having decided that they wanted to press on to the Tokugawa Museum. We told them that we’d rather stay and do the Castle justice, meeting them back at the hotel.»
Before entering the Castle, we passed through a display of azaleas in bonsai. We were particularly surprised by the plants with blossoms of varying colors.
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Mark at the bonsai show. That is not the Nagoya Castle there, but a subsidiary building |
My journal continues: «The Castle was burnt down to the foundation in an air raid in 1945. A tremendous loss, of course. Rebuilt in the 1960’s, so it’s “merely” a restoration. But full of interesting displays and beautiful things. We agreed that the extra time spent there was worth the while.»
When we got near to the Castle, I tried getting some shots showing the rhythm of the successive roofs as they mounted one on another. Inside, there were relatively few things I wanted to take pictures of, since many of the most interesting things were paintings, and I prefer not to photograph museum-quality pieces, especially paintings.
But there were a number of representations of the heraldic “dolphin” fish (see the sidebar here), including a pair of bronze rainspouts that you see in the lower row to the left, and a model of the big golden ones on the roof, meant to be sat on by tourists: it even had a grab bar to hold on to. Mark’s posed in front of that, so you can’t see it in the picture in the top row. At the left in the lower row is the newly constructed restoration of the original carriage house of the Castle, which we didn’t go into because it would have required removing shoes, and we were eager to get into the main show.
We stayed till closing, and as we left, we passed a work-area enclosed in more-or-less transparent plastic sheeting. Inside was a single workman, trimming a wooden joint. Both of us were fascinated, and would have loved to get good pictures. What with the plastic, though, this was not possible. I have just one, which you see to the left; I believe that Mark has a movie taken with his iPhone, but I’m not sure whether he’s included it in his page for this day.
One more final quote from my journal:
«Nagoya Station is surmounted by two 50-story towers. which split apart only above the thirteenth floor. On twelve and thirteen, there are dozens of restaurants, and on the 51st of one of the towers, a pair of restaurants that we investigated. One was outrageously expensive, the other totally uninteresting. So we wound up at a place on the twelfth featuring “fusion” food. We got a bottle of Château de Francs Côtes de Bordeaux, sounds like Charlot à vingt francs, but it was mellow and pleasant. About ¥5100, not at all bad for a perfectly acceptable bottle in a fancy restaurant. M & I both had vichyssoise, very nice. Cindy got a whole rockfish, which she exclaimed over, I had a veal dish that wasn’t thrilling, but was satisfactory. For dessert, I had a hazelnut torte that was not all that tasty, but it was accompanied by melon soup. The soup was garnished with a little slice of melon that was unusually flavorful, and the soup itself was heavenly.
«Although today was not a heavy walking day, both M & I were glad to get to bed, and slept soundly.»
And now it’s time for you to read about the very interesting time we had the next day.