Nagoya City and Nearby Day Trips

06/19 Friday – Day 1

On May 21st the state of emergency for Hyogo (the prefecture we live in) was lifted. Then on June 19, the government also relaxed its recommendation against non-essential cross-prefectural travel. We decided to leave right after I finished work and head to Nagoya, one of the largest cities in Japan. Nagoya is located roughly halfway between Himeji and Tokyo and is the largest city in the extensive Chubu Region. We took the Shinkansen bullet train from Himeji Station to Nagoya Station, taking only 1 hour and 25 minutes to get there. Once we arrived we headed straight to our hotel to prepare for the next day's adventure.

06/20 Saturday – Day 2

               

Our first stop was seeing Nagoya Castle and Honmaru Palace. Nagoya Castle was built in 1615 but was was destroyed in an air raid in 1945. The castle was rebuilt and also declared a National Treasure in the following years. Honmaru was the residential palace of the feudal lords and was also destroyed in the air raids. It has been reconstructed and opened to the public since 2018. Like in various historic places in Japan, we had to remove our shoes before entering. Due to Covid, they were limiting entry to a handful of people at a time, along with checking temperatures and providing hand sanitizer prior to entering.

     

After finishing our visit to the castle and palace, we tried misokatsudon for the first time at Misokatsu Yabaton, a popular restaurant chain in Nagoya. Misokatsu is a pork cutlet (tonkatsu) with a miso-based sauce. It is particularly associated with Nagoya. The restaurant we went to has been making this dish for over 60 years. It was delicious and we both left the restaurant quite full.

06/21 Sunday – Day 3 (Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture)

     

After exploring Nagoya, we decided to take some day trips to nearby areas. We took a 26-minute train ride from Meitetsu Nagoya Station to Inuyama Station. From the station it was just a 15-minute walk to reach the castle on the hill. This castle is one out of five in Japan that have been named National Treasures.

06/22 Monday – Day 4 (Gifu, Gifu Prefecture)

We took a 19-minute train ride from Nagoya Station to Gifu Station. This was our second day trip to from Nagoya and the first to take us out of Aichi Prefecture, where Nagoya itself is located. Once we arrived to Gifu Station, it was a 15-minute walk following the river to reach the castle.

     

We walked around Gifu Park and ate at a restaurant close to the castle. We had misokatsudon again for lunch while being able to enjoy the view of the city.

06/23 Tuesday – Day 5 (Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture)

Our final day trip outside of Nagoya was to Matsumoto Castle. The train ride from Nagoya Station to Matsumoto Station was two hours long and took us through the mountainous inner portions of the Chubu Region. Matsumoto Castle was built on a fairly flat plain among the mountains and is not on a hill or mountain like most of the other castles we've visited. This castle is also the one featured on the cover of the top 100 Castles in Japan book that we've been using to document our castle visits.

     

06/24 Wednesday – Day 6

We decided to take it easy this day and visit the SCMaglev and Railway Park in Nagoya. The museum is dedicated to the many types of trains used in Japan, with a special emphasis on the Shinkansen and maglev railways (which use magnets to actually make the trains float above the rails). The weather was getting hot and humid and this minimized our time outside. Like various other businesses, they had hand sanitizer and were checking temperatures at the entrance. We also went during the week, so there weren't many people visiting the museum apart from a handful of families with young children.

Safety measures in Japanese, English and Chinese in the train station.

06/25 Thursday – Day 7 (Ise, Mie Prefecture)

     

On our final day we visited Ise city in Mie Prefecture. It was an hour and 37 minutes by train from Nagoya Station to Iseshi Station. Our IC cards that we use for transportation did not work for this station so we had to buy train tickets before boarding. We visited Ise Grand Shrine Geku (Outer Shrine) and Naiku (Inner Shrine). Ise Grand Shrine is Japan's most sacred shrine and has been dedicated to the sun goddess Amaterasu since the 3rd century. Amaterasu is one of the most important deities in Shinto religion and, according to tradition, is believed to be the ancestor of Jimmu, Japan's first emperor. Due to Shinto belief of death and the renewal of nature, the structures are torn down and rebuilt every 20 years. Amazingly, this has been happening since the 3rd century!

Visitors are not allowed to take pictures of the main shrine buildings. This is a sacred place, and you can feel it in the atmosphere. You also walk along gravel paths in wooded areas with building that use shinmei-zukuri architecture, which is an ancient simple Japanese architecture style. Ise Grand Shrine is maybe the first place we have seen so far during our travels that uses this type of architecture style.

I'm holding Blake's umbrella while he's taking pictures of the area and me.

Once we were finished exploring Ise city we headed back to Himeji, which was about 3 hours away. We bought tickets to catch a train from Ise-Nakagawa Station to Tsuruhashi Station in Osaka. From Tsuruhashi Station we transferred to the Osaka Loop Line (which accepts IC Cards) to get to Osaka Station. Our final transfer was at Osaka Station where we boarded the JR special rapid train to Himeji Station.