Emiiichan Blog ☆ : Nagoya weekend trip Day 1 - Science Museum, Nagoya Castle, Oasis 21

Another weekend, another long drive for a 3 day mini-vacation! For the first week of April, we did a mini road trip with my parents to visit Zao Fox Village and ended up seeing ALL THE FLOWERS along the way and ate some great local food. This time, it's just me and my husband and one destination - Nagoya!

After work on Friday, we packed up the car and got on the road. We left shortly after 16:00 with an anticipated 5 hour drive ahead of us per Google Maps.

The drive was pretty straightforward, most of it on the expressway. Even with a little rest stop bathroom break, we arrived at our hotel in Kanayama just about 4 hours later. We parked the car, checked into the room and then headed out again on foot to the nearest train station. Since it was already pretty late, we knew our best bet was an izakaya. From the couple that I had bookmarked, my husband chose this one near Nagoya station - 鳥開総本家, known for its (cochin) chicken!

We were able to be seated right away and of course ordered a bunch of chicken dishes! I really enjoyed the karaage and my husband's favorite was the oyako bowl. This place was a little pricey, but the quality was there to match.

Since it was already pretty late and not much else was open, we just caught the train back. There's a Family Mart conveniently located across the street from our hotel, so we stopped for some dessert and called it a night after a long drive.

Tyical ol' Toyoko Inn double size hotel room lol.

Actual Day 1 of the weekend - Saturday! We started with the free hotel breakfast. This one was a bit different than the other Toyoko Inn breakfasts we had with a large seating area, but still enjoyable in its own way. They even had bentos ready to go if you had somewhere to be.

Rain was anticipated pretty much all day, but I had checked the reports ahead of time so at least it wasn't a surprise. We had initially planned a different morning activity but decided to swap it out since it wouldn't be fun in this weather.

At the Kanayama subway station, we purchased our Weekend Eco Tickets/Donichi Eco Kippu from the ticket machine. (I think maybe if you buy it from the information center, it might be prettier lol.) When buying from the ticket machine, these are only available for purchase on weekends and on the day you buy them (date is printed on it). For 620yen, we were able to get unlimited subway and bus rides in Nagoya as well as discounts to some of the tourist facilities in the area. It goes through the wicket just like any other ticket.

First stop via subway was the Nagoya Science Museum! It's about a 12 minute walk from the closest subway station, but we opted to do this first because it's all indoors. We arrived about 20 minutes after it opened and a decent line had formed for buying admission tickets, but it moved pretty fast.

Standard admission to the science museum is 400yen but you can add on the planetarium and/or the special exhibition for additional cost. We opted to add in the Special Exhibition. After showing our Donichi Eco Kippu, we were able to get 10% off admission, so it came out to 1400yen each.

We went to check out the special exhibition first - スケスケ展　─スケると見える仕組みの世界 . This one was running from last March to early June and was basically viewing the world by seeing the
"skeletons" of every day things.

It started off pretty standard with electronic displays of the skeletons of animals/living things.

But then got a little more interesting with the inanimate objects - like seeing the backbone design of this glider.

I also just really liked this train map lol.

Some of the displays were interactive like this racecar and the piano. There were parts of it that were exposed so you could see how steering affected the wheels and pushing the keys generated sound.

And some other stuff you don't generally think abut like this sport ball display and fireworks.

There was also a small set of aquariums which had sea life that fit the theme. I particularly liked this large hermit crab that they put a clear shell on!

But, overall, special exhibition wasn't really worth it. It was interesting, and we enjoyed the interactive parts of it, but wasn't extremely necessary. If you're on a budget, I'd definitely say you're generally not missing much by skipping these. We were glad to support the museum though!

The main part of the Science Museum is split into two sections on each floor - biology/life and science/engineering. We moved up to the 2nd floor where there are a bunch of highly interactive displays and lots and lots of kids running around lol.

We had some fun ourselves and continued to enjoy the museum, walking through each display on each of the floors (2F- 6F). As the floors get higher, the target audience age gets a little older as well.

(My husband during this trip in 2023 vs. Me during a trip in Spring 2017)

We had pretty good timing for this tornado lab where a staff member dressed as a witch sent a bunch of different colored and shaped balloons up the wind tunnel.

We had entered the museum just at about 10:00 and didn't leave until nearly 12:45. By this time, we were hungry and a little tired from standing so much lol.

It was still raining, but luckily not as heavily as it was when we entered. We chose to walk to the Osu Kannon area and picked a misokatsu chain for lunch - Yaboton. The location we went to seemed to have an abbreviated(?) menu, but we were still able to find what we were looking for.

We ordered one lunch set which included rosu kushikatsu, miso oden and aji fry + a side of menchi katsu and a ramen. Nagoya is known for misokatsu and this chain is quite popular, so we knew we had to eat it at least once.

After lunch, we continued walking through the Osu Kannon shopping district. It's a covered shopping arcade, so there's lots of different little restaurants and shops. If we weren't so full from lunch, we definitely would have stopped for a snack or two along the way.

We eventually made it to another subway station and caught the train to Nagoyajyo station to get to Nagoya Castle. I was pleasantly surprised to see a bunch of really purple wisteria hanging on a trellis just outside!

As of 2017, they no longer allow visitors into the castle itself, but we still wanted to walk around the grounds. We purchased our tickets, again with a small discount thanks to the Eco Donichi Kippu, and then went right in.

It was very lightly raining, but for a lot of our visit we were able to walk around without the umbrellas up. There were a couple of deer in the "moat" area of the castle (not filled with water lol) and some nice azalea bushes + some dying peach blossoms lol.

There was a long line to enter what I think is like a recreation separate from the castle (it's the ground level brown building behind us in these photos), but we decided it wasn't worth waiting for, so we snapped our pictures and left.

Nagoya Castle Spring 2023 vs Spring 2017 (the weather was much nicer lol)

We ran into some ninjas near the exit, so we stopped for the photo op.

And then proceeded out to one of the restaurants along the path to get a little Ninja mochi ice cream cone!

We didn't have too much left on the agenda for the day, but were definitely not yet hungry for dinner. Since the weather cleared up a little bit and we didn't have to worry about the train costs, I recommended a brief stop at Oasis21 to get a view of the Mirai Tower.

At Oasis 21 in April 2023 vs April 2017

The ground was all wet and a bit slippery, so we didnt stay long, but it was a good opportunity to see one of the landmarks of the city.

After a little break and still not hungry, I dragged us over to Nagoya PARCO, so I could do a little shopping. There are a lot of Runway Channel brands at this mall - EATME, Resexxy, EMODA, MercuryDuo, EVRIS, etc and I also wanted to check out the Darich, eimyistoire and TreatUrself popup.

Not for lack of trying (after going into to SO many stores), we walked out with nothing, but at least it was a more reasonable time for dinner!

It had started to steadily rain again, but we chose to walk from PARCO (near Yabacho station) towards the Sakae area which is about 1 train stop away. There a was a little bit of confusion on our part, but we finally settled on getting udon at Mentsurubi Nishiki!

A kishimen set for my husband which had miso kushikatsu, tebasaki and tenmusu sides (all items Nagoya is known for!) and I decided to get a katsu curry kishimen. We were both happy with our choices! The fat flat noodles are really fun to eat and the variety was nice.

Finally feeling like we could call it a day, we used our Donichi Eco Kippu one last time to get us back to Kanayama. Just like the previous night, we closed out the night with some Family Mart desserts!

Going out all day without the car, this was a lot how I was used to traveling when I would visit as a tourist! We stayed out as long as possible, trying to hit all the tourist landmarks and catching the train from place to place. Honestly - it's a bit exhausting not just stopping much except to eat lol.

We stopped at 3 of the spots I had been to before in Spring 2017 (Science Museum, Nagoya Castle and Oasis21), but it was still a different and fun experience for me to be there with my husband.

Given the weather conditions, I think we made the most out of our day and our subway pass! It definitely paid for itself with just a couple of rides and the two discounts we got at the Science Museum and the Castle. I'm glad the rain didn't stop us from getting out there, exploring and trying some local specialties along the way!