Right, so on Sunday we woke up in Nagoya. The forecast was for rain starting around noon, so we got up and checked out of the hotel at 10am, and got on a train to Kuwana City in Mie Prefecture, so I could cross that off my prefectures visited list. However, Mie is dead boring. Kuwana is 20 minutes from Nagoya, supposedly has a population of 100,000 and is a tourist type of city, and yet there isn't all that much to see there that doesn't require getting on a car or bus.
From looking at the map by the station, the most interesting thing seemed to either be the ruins of Kuwana Castle, or Rokkaen, a mansion built by a foreign architect about 100 years ago. The castle ruins were by the water, so we went there. It's about half a mile from Kuwana station, maybe a bit more... and there was like NOBODY out on the street. Surprising for a Sunday afternoon in downtown.
The ruins themselves are now a city park, so you can't even REALLY tell there was a castle there, aside from the maps explaining "You are now where the ninomaru tower was", or one place saying "Here's one of the yagura watchtowers", and there is a cannon there. There is a moat, and there is a pagoda in the middle of the moat at one point which is pretty cool looking. Overall, though, eh, it's nothing special. What's kind of cool is that now, where the servants' quarters and such were in the original castle, is a baseball field :) And next to that is a public swimming pool. Next to those is a shrine, which might have actually been part of the original castle compound, maybe...
It was mostly deserted, though we saw a few other people walking around. A pair of women from Aichi swapped photo-taking with us near the pagoda.
We wandered back downtown and decided to just go eat lunch in Nagoya rather than in Kuwana.
I had my heart set on Sekai no Yamachan, a Nagoya-specialty izakaya. I was thinking I would feel guilty for not calling![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kawaru, except, get this -- I forgot that almost all Yamachans are not open for lunch. Shit. So instead, we just went to the Nagoya Dome, arriving around 1:30 by that point. After some more photos in Dragons Road, we went to the food court in the AEON Mall next to the Nagoya Dome, and got omurice for lunch, and walked around taking photos of all the places with Dragons Victory Sales going on.
Then I found out that the Dragons jersey that I decided I want (this one, I believe it's the 1999 version) haven't been sold in ages there. I don't really want another dark blue one, and I don't really like white shirts in general. So I ended up not getting a new jersey at all, but instead got a Doala 2010 Opening Day Lineup t-shirt, and the victory newspaper set, and some Doala shirimochi as omiyage.
And well, that was about it for Nagoya. We basically headed back to Tokyo at that point, with some waiting time in the station for about 30 mins in order to sit together on the shinkansen. No interesting people on the ride back and I don't even really remember anything about it at all, to be honest.
Rather than actually get dinner, we stopped in at Ito Yokado and then went home for the evening to unwind.
Mike left to go back to Seattle on Monday, but he will be back here around Thanksgiving time in November. It is weird to think that Ai and Doug will be gone by then.
Because I had only one class on Monday, I ended up meeting up with Mike on his way to the airport so I could get my keys back; I did the Oku->Akabane->Nippori->Ueno->Oku ride and was gone from school for less than an hour. I don't think anyone noticed...
Monday night I went to the Yodobashi in Akihabara, printed out some photos to hopefully get signed (they were having a 33% off sale on the print machines, so it was 40 yen for 2L and 20 yen for L) and ate Indian food, where I basically had the same thing I did last time and it was still very good. At home I did laundry and fell asleep before it was done, and woke up at midnight to hang it up. Whoops.
Tuesday night after school I went to Jingu for the Swallows-Tigers game! The Keio-Rikkio deathmatch ended in the 5th game, in 14 innings... it started at 1 and ended around 5:15pm! The funny thing is, when I got to Jingu around 5:45, I saw my friend Ogura, and some of the Keio players, so I said hi to them. Or more like, after Ogura called over Nagasaki-kun and I ran away, Fuchigami-kun actually noticed me and nodded hello first, so I went over to him and the other two guys and was like "Otsukaresama! What a long game, good thing you guys won!" I guess I'm getting slightly less shy.
Sat with Kozo, Pellegrini, Suzuki-kun, Kyoko, and a whole bunch of random people (Ben... Weber I think), and watched the Tigers clobber the Swallows. Matt Murton got his 211th and 212th and 213th hits, breaking Ichiro's single-season record. Crazy. I gave people the Doala shirimochi I had brought back -- they are strawberry mochi cream balls shaped like Doala's tail, and Kozo explained to me that "That's a really bad pun -- you could see it as being Doala butt mochi, OR that 'shirimochi' means to fall on your ass," and I'm like "Well, Doala always DOES fall on his ass..."
The dude who sat in front of me like 2 weeks ago at the Giants game, who was friends with #57 Matsui, came up to me like "HEY DO YOU REMEMBER ME!" and I was like sure, so I talked to him for a bit and his friends who were sitting a section or two away. Whee.
We're going to be at Jingu on Saturday night too, if anyone feels like coming to the game to hang out. It's the last home game of the year. Sad.
From looking at the map by the station, the most interesting thing seemed to either be the ruins of Kuwana Castle, or Rokkaen, a mansion built by a foreign architect about 100 years ago. The castle ruins were by the water, so we went there. It's about half a mile from Kuwana station, maybe a bit more... and there was like NOBODY out on the street. Surprising for a Sunday afternoon in downtown.
The ruins themselves are now a city park, so you can't even REALLY tell there was a castle there, aside from the maps explaining "You are now where the ninomaru tower was", or one place saying "Here's one of the yagura watchtowers", and there is a cannon there. There is a moat, and there is a pagoda in the middle of the moat at one point which is pretty cool looking. Overall, though, eh, it's nothing special. What's kind of cool is that now, where the servants' quarters and such were in the original castle, is a baseball field :) And next to that is a public swimming pool. Next to those is a shrine, which might have actually been part of the original castle compound, maybe...
It was mostly deserted, though we saw a few other people walking around. A pair of women from Aichi swapped photo-taking with us near the pagoda.
We wandered back downtown and decided to just go eat lunch in Nagoya rather than in Kuwana.
I had my heart set on Sekai no Yamachan, a Nagoya-specialty izakaya. I was thinking I would feel guilty for not calling
kawaru, except, get this -- I forgot that almost all Yamachans are not open for lunch. Shit. So instead, we just went to the Nagoya Dome, arriving around 1:30 by that point. After some more photos in Dragons Road, we went to the food court in the AEON Mall next to the Nagoya Dome, and got omurice for lunch, and walked around taking photos of all the places with Dragons Victory Sales going on.Then I found out that the Dragons jersey that I decided I want (this one, I believe it's the 1999 version) haven't been sold in ages there. I don't really want another dark blue one, and I don't really like white shirts in general. So I ended up not getting a new jersey at all, but instead got a Doala 2010 Opening Day Lineup t-shirt, and the victory newspaper set, and some Doala shirimochi as omiyage.
And well, that was about it for Nagoya. We basically headed back to Tokyo at that point, with some waiting time in the station for about 30 mins in order to sit together on the shinkansen. No interesting people on the ride back and I don't even really remember anything about it at all, to be honest.
Rather than actually get dinner, we stopped in at Ito Yokado and then went home for the evening to unwind.
Mike left to go back to Seattle on Monday, but he will be back here around Thanksgiving time in November. It is weird to think that Ai and Doug will be gone by then.
Because I had only one class on Monday, I ended up meeting up with Mike on his way to the airport so I could get my keys back; I did the Oku->Akabane->Nippori->Ueno->Oku ride and was gone from school for less than an hour. I don't think anyone noticed...
Monday night I went to the Yodobashi in Akihabara, printed out some photos to hopefully get signed (they were having a 33% off sale on the print machines, so it was 40 yen for 2L and 20 yen for L) and ate Indian food, where I basically had the same thing I did last time and it was still very good. At home I did laundry and fell asleep before it was done, and woke up at midnight to hang it up. Whoops.
Tuesday night after school I went to Jingu for the Swallows-Tigers game! The Keio-Rikkio deathmatch ended in the 5th game, in 14 innings... it started at 1 and ended around 5:15pm! The funny thing is, when I got to Jingu around 5:45, I saw my friend Ogura, and some of the Keio players, so I said hi to them. Or more like, after Ogura called over Nagasaki-kun and I ran away, Fuchigami-kun actually noticed me and nodded hello first, so I went over to him and the other two guys and was like "Otsukaresama! What a long game, good thing you guys won!" I guess I'm getting slightly less shy.
Sat with Kozo, Pellegrini, Suzuki-kun, Kyoko, and a whole bunch of random people (Ben... Weber I think), and watched the Tigers clobber the Swallows. Matt Murton got his 211th and 212th and 213th hits, breaking Ichiro's single-season record. Crazy. I gave people the Doala shirimochi I had brought back -- they are strawberry mochi cream balls shaped like Doala's tail, and Kozo explained to me that "That's a really bad pun -- you could see it as being Doala butt mochi, OR that 'shirimochi' means to fall on your ass," and I'm like "Well, Doala always DOES fall on his ass..."
The dude who sat in front of me like 2 weeks ago at the Giants game, who was friends with #57 Matsui, came up to me like "HEY DO YOU REMEMBER ME!" and I was like sure, so I talked to him for a bit and his friends who were sitting a section or two away. Whee.
We're going to be at Jingu on Saturday night too, if anyone feels like coming to the game to hang out. It's the last home game of the year. Sad.
