Nagoya tour pt.2, the massive down pour !

Today I slept a bit longer than yesterday (to about 10 a.m.), took a shower and left for Nagoya station.
I had arranged a meeting with another couch surfer from Nagoya to meet him and his Polish host and go around the city with them. We were going to meet at 12.30 inside the JR Nagoya station, in front of the infamous "kintokei" or gold clock.

As we had extended our greetings and introduced ourselves to each other we went to get something to eat, I had tough about skipping breakfast but as soon as I had arrived at the Nagoya station I had searched a bakery where I could kill some time before meeting them and had my breakfast there. 

I also went and filmed inside of LABI Nagoya, a really big and cool dep.store near the station. 

Anyways, we went and ate "kishimen" which is a flat type of noodle and also one of the local must eat cuisines!
It tasted great, just marvelous, and the guys also enjoyed their portions. 

We then went to the subway station/underground shopping mall to get our one day passes for the city subway and buses, the prize was something around 600 yen so a pretty good deal since the subway system is really useful in Nagoya and saves ass-loads of time.

We started of by going to the Nagoya castle, which is still having some reconstructions done to the annex buildings but the castle in it self was visible and you could still enter.

The castle has an museum inside of it where you can learn about the history of Nagoya and also a bit of Japanese history in general, like for example about the Shogunate etc. 

It had been raining ever since we arrived at the castle so it was kind of a bummer but it didn't bother us since we are not made out of sugar ( I hope). 

From there we took the subway to Nagoya st to change into a buss taking us to the famous Toyota Museum, a place where I recommend that everyone should go and visit when in Nagoya! 

I have blogged about it before also and you can check my older posts for that or you could just watch my video for today from my YouTube account (TravelersPOV). 

We spent a while there gazing and awed in amazement. 

We soon took the buss and stopped to change for the subway again (It's so easy to change when ever you want when you buy the one day tickets!).
Our destination was Osu Kanon (http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3306.html) it's very famous and a beautiful little temple that you should visit when you have the time, we however couldn't stay for long since the weather was just depressing. 

OSU KANON

There is a shopping arcade right next to the temple where we then went and ate some deep fried chicken bits ("kara-age") and I also found a 100 Yen store (similar to, but way better than, the one euro stores we have in Finland).
For those who do not know what they sell there let me tell you. In short : EVERYTHING! 

I bought myself a toothbrush and toothpaste since I didn't bother taking any of those two items with me here to Japan. 

We started to get hungry so we consulted for a while where we should go and eat and we decided on a place that sells another Nagoya cuisine, Miso-katsu, deepfried pork cutlet with miso-sauce. 

It was pure heaven, just amazing! Delicious! 

It was a old chain that had been making this same style of dish for many years now and the recipe was handed down from the older generation. 

When we had eaten we took a stroll to the nearby Oasis 21 underground shopping mall to have a coffee and chat before I was to return to Rod's (my couch surfer host) apartment in Sanno. 

I had a really enjoyable day with the guys and I'll meet Kentaro tomorrow and he will give me a tour of his University, so look forward to the pictures and videos from that ! 

Also I had a really good time talking with Rod about just basic random stuff.

I have to hand it out to him that he has really been so nice to let me stay at his apartment through couch surfing! Thanks Rod! 

Cheers 

Robert