Nagoya

The trip from Kanazawa to Nagoya involved three trains, and our transfers were tight 😳 We took a shinkansen to Tsuruga first, and we needed to transfer to a limited express train to Maibara - we had 8 minutes and the station was packed. We made it and then had a luxurious 13 minutes to transfer to the shinkansen to Nagoya for the final leg.

Arriving in Nagoya station was like landing at a disaster evacuation centre; the crowds were insane and it was chaos. We always like to organise our next train tickets upon arrival, so we set out to find the right shinkansen vending machine. So, most machines are just for same-day purchase or for ticket pick-up! We eventually found the correct machine and got our green car tickets for Okayama for Monday - we'll then get a local train to Kurashiki, our next destination.

We looked at JR rail passes, but they've increased in cost 50% recently, and they're not worth it! The passes can only be bought before you come to Japan and in 7, 14 & 21 day passes - as we're here for 34 days, the pass didn't make sense for a lot of reasons.

Anyway, we found our way to our hotel , the Toyoko Inn, a chain business hotel, and checked in. The room is pretty small but will work.

We decided to head out to Noritake Gardens - the ceramic maker - it's in a nice redbrick building with nice gardens surrounding it. We were a bit underwhelmed by it all and wondered why so many people were there. We walked through an Aeon shopping centre nearby before heading back to the hotel.

We bought some drinks from a convenience store - I love how you can buy a whiskey highball in a can for under $3! After a drink and watching sumo wrestling on TV (we've got into even though we have little idea what's going on), we went to a BBQ restaurant. It's American style BBQ, and the food was really good - we ordered too much. In Japan, they do lots of international cuisines really well - so no judgement, people 😅

As an aside, we seem to be staying near the red light are of town 😜Les mer