Nagoya, Japan: You Wet So and So

For the twenty-four hours that I was in Nagoya it pissed it down. How’s that for a caveat? No beating around the bush with this one. It rained fucking hard. So much so that it almost destroyed all my money, JR Pass, and passport from within my waterproof bag. Alas, all was as right as rain after a night of drying out. I, however, needed a little more TLC.

Nonetheless, I didn’t let mother nature dictate my movements so I pressed on to discover Nagoya. It’s not a bad city at all. Not comparable to Yokohama and certainly not to Tokyo of course but it was certainly worth the interim day trip en route to Kyoto from Kawaguchiko. It has temples. It has malls. It has lots of people. Oh, some beautiful urban architecture too!

But something irked me whilst in Nagoya that I hadn’t seen previously throughout my trip. Something of a frequent site in Brighton/London, but not in Japan. There were plenty of these little shanty villages running underneath and along the Nagoya Expressway…

Certainly not a nice thought when you realise this is someone’s ‘home’, in its loose sense of course. With so much Japanese culture thus far appearing idyllic, it was some welcomed perspective that even in a society such as Japan’s, there are still some that struggle with what life throws them.

All in all, a good trip and I got to see Nagoya Castle 🙂 which was the biggest allure…

I also came across this amazing sign:

Next up: Kyoto.