Impressive wealth in Nagoya

We put on our yukatas for a last time and put everything away in our suitcases. We feel slightly sad we have to leave this special room behind. It was nice to stay in such a wonderful place. If we come back to Japan in the future, we'll check to stay more often in a ryokan.

The Western-style breakfast has fruits, yoghurt, some salad and vinegar... Everything is again nicely presented in large wooden boxes. We're not sorry that the fried fish is not there in the morning.

After checking out, we're offered another pair of tatami socks and some nicely decorated chopsticks for free. The hotel staff bows us goodbye and we cross the town square to the train station. We're getting the hang of how the ticket vending machines work, so we buy a ticket to Nagoya in no time with seat reservation. It's the same limited express train as yesterday, but this time we travel a bit further to the first big city outside of the Alps: Nagoya.

Nagoya is a large city and the home of one of Japan's pride brands: Toyota. Despite its size, we stop here only for one reason: the castle of Nagoya. During our train ride, we're optimizing our stopover: looking online for a floor map of the station and where the lockers are located. Luckily, these things are pretty easy to find. We drop our bags in one of the coin lockers near the shinkansen terminal and change to the subway. A couple of minutes later, we arrive near the castle's grounds. It's blazing hot today and before we start exploring the castle, we have a sip of water and something to eat on a bench near the subway exit.

The castle grounds are pretty big, but the key element of interest is of course the castle itself. Due to extensive renovation works, the castle's keep (and main building) are closed to the public. We knew this beforehand but quickly find relief in the magnificent Hommaru palace. The whole place is a reconstruction of the old palace which served as a place for the shogun to live and invite his guests. The castle itself was always more considered as a military and strategical building.

Many of Japan's castles are reconstructions or extensive renovations of the original building. Most of them were destroyed during World War II or burned down. Nevertheless, they put immense effort into making it as original as possible and we never had the feeling at looking at a fake replica.

The waiting line to enter the Hommaru palace is not long and very well organized. You stand in line, are invited to watch a short video about photography and shoe policy. Once you arrive inside there is a large area with lockers to store your shoes and even a separate area with larger lockers to store backpacks.
As we enter our tour of the palace, it's immediately clear that this place had to represent wealth and class. There are huge panels with gold leaf paintings of historical events and wildlife. The palace consists of different rooms that all have tatami floors and sliding doors made of rice paper. Every door or wall is artistically painted and decorated. The fact that we won't be able to visit the castle's keep is highly compensated for by this piece of art.

Back outside we walk around the castle's grounds to take some pictures of the iconic white main keep with the green roof. On the roof, there's a golden fish statue which was believed to protect the castle from fire.

It's interesting to see the different warfare defense strategies. It must have been very difficult to take such a castle. Before arriving at the main keep, you have to pass through various reinforced gates. The castle grounds look more like a city within a city. All surrounded by a moat that can be controlled by floodgates to either add or drain the water in case of an attack via the river/waterways.

It's past midday when we finish our tour and frequent announcements on the broadcasting system are advising visitors to drink enough water and find shade due to the heat. We find some cooling in a café and have another matcha ice cream before heading back to the train station.

Picking up our luggage, buying tickets for the shinkansen to Kyoto all go with great ease. Only 35 minutes later we arrive in the cultural capital of Japan: Kyoto. Having arrived in the second metropole, we have to look for the subway. Apparently, it's almost entirely separate from the train station. Going "down-under" doesn't mean you have found the subway. At first, we arrive at an entire level of shops, stores, restaurants. When it's raining or snowing you can easily find something dry and warm to do here!

The subway takes us in a few minutes to the halt near our hotel in the center of Kyoto. We check-in at the hotel and ask the reception desk about information on renting bikes. We've heard that Kyoto is the biking city of Japan... so why not try it out and discover the next few days by bike?
We're given a couple of flyers and choose one that is close to the hotel. Just before closing time, we decide to stop by and ask for the possibility to rent a bike for the next two days.

It's just before 6PM when we enter the bike store. A young lady that's super fluent in English (which is rather rare) explains us the different options. Unfortunately, it's not possible to take the bikes home the very same evening and only pay for the next two days. However, she gives us a nice discount that makes it worth our while to take them with us already so that we can start early in the morning without any hassle of picking them up. We have a hefty program tomorrow, so we don't want to waste time on this, especially as the store only opens late.

After some documents and a video, we receive a map of Kyoto. Some of the streets are pedestrian only and are prohibited for bikes. We have to take great care not to enter those, unless when walking with our bike at hand. You also can't just park your bike anywhere you want. There are designated parking areas for bikes that are either free (mostly at historical sites) or you have to pay a day fee and then you can use any parking for the rest of the day. It's a bit weird that you have to pay for bicycle parking, but the prices aren't high so it's still okay.

Since we've found a local that is fluent in English, we ask her if she knows a nice place to go and eat tonight. We want to try omurice. A dish that... as the name suggests... has rice in it and an omelet. The omelet is baked in a frying pan, and immediately folded in half making the outside stiff, but the inside is still runny. There's a famous restaurant for this dish, but reservations have to be made beforehand and otherwise you just have to go and wait in line until a table becomes available.

With our bikes, we go to the famous restaurant, but the waiting line is already pretty long, and we don't want to wait. After all, we have no idea how long it will take before we can have dinner. We look online for another place that serves this dish and find one in the vicinity of Kyoto station. Omurice is tasty but maybe slightly less wauw than expected. Or perhaps that's just because we ended up in a cheap(er) place and you have to go to the famous restaurant to try the real deal.

When we arrive back at the hotel, we ask the hotel staff at reception if we can park our bikes somewhere. An employee walks with us to the storage area of the hotel where we can place our bikes. Whenever we want to retrieve them, we simply have to ask the front desk to open the storage area again for us.

It's time to go to bed, because tomorrow we want to wake up early. We have a lot of famous touristic sites planned, and for some of them, we really want to beat the crowds. Early wakey wakey!Lue lisää