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.
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.
"skeletons" of every day things.
I also just really liked this train map lol.
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!
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)
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
i always love reading your blog posts ♡ thank you for sharing ~~
ReplyDeleteThank you so much and thank you for commenting as well! It's nice to know someone is reading :)
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