Nagoya and New Years

I know this is a bit late, sorry, I've been very busy! The day after Christmas, and my last post, Mike and I boarded the Nagoya bound train. We found our hotel easily and it was in a great location right near the station! Our room wasn't ready yet since it was still before noon, so we headed out to the zoo. It was pretty big and had a botanical garden and children's play area in it. We saw everything from bison and wolves to polar bears and penguins. After seeing everything, we headed back to our hotel to check out our room. We got hungry and stopped at a chicken place across the street from our hotel for a quick snack. We got a few different dishes from their おすすめ (osusume, specials) menu. The food was great and we happily heading off to our hotel. We ended up with a room and the 10th floor and had a great view! We got settled in to the room before wandering around the hotel area and eventually heading for dinner at a restaurant called Yagya. We had seen the restaurant on the way to the hotel. The outside of the building looks like an old temple and the food was pretty good! They were also filming a TV show called ためしてガッテン (Tameshite Gatten) at the restaurant that night. They started filming when we left, so we weren't filmed for the show, but it was still pretty cool to see all the cameras and everyone working. We were pretty tired from traveling, so we heading back to the hotel right after dinner. We had free drink tickets as a welcome gift from the hotel, so we stopped at the bar on the bottom floor for a drink before heading to bed.

The next day we got up early again and headed to the station to catch a bus to 長嶋スパーランド (Nagashima Spa Land)! The bus was a little under an hour and we were so excited! Spa Land is a combination 温泉 (onsen, hot spring), spa, and amusement park. It is home to the longest roller coaster in the world, Steel Dragon 2000. Unfortunately, the coaster was down for maintenance the day we went, but we still had a ton of fun! The park had many roller coasters and other rides that we really enjoyed. We even went on to the Pokemon Adventure Camp, a walk through game with a small touch pad and camera that interacted with images throughout the camp. They also had special deals at the spa for the holidays, so Mike and I both got massages. We grabbed a bus back to Nagoya for dinner and decided we wanted to see more of the city, so we went to the tallest building in the city for a nice view. We went to the top of the Marriott hotel by Nagoya station, which had a sky bar on the 52nd story. The view of the city was beautiful, but everything was very expensive! We ended up just getting drinks and a small appetizer. We thought we should get a new angle on the city, so we heading to another sky bar called The One and Only. This one was on the 40th floor of a different building, but the interior of the bar had very little lighting, so the lights of the city really stood out. We had a table right next to the window overlooking Nagoya castle! As you can probably guess, this place was also fairly expensive, so again we got a small salad to share and one drink each. It was an amazing view, but eventually we did get hungry from some real food so we headed off to Papanero, a place we'd seen near our hotel that looked good. It was in the basement of a building, but the interior was beautiful! It was an Italian restaurant and we had a great pizza and いのしし (inoshishi, wild boar) pasta. We checked out one more bar, Back Forty, before turning in for the night.

on Sunday we decided to extend our trip for an extra day. We spent a good part of the morning making the arrangements with the hotel and exchanging our train tickets. We did have time to grab a quick breakfast at a German cake shop and walk through Nagoya's central park while getting everything settled. We decided to try a Nagoya specialty pasta for lunch that was really delicious before heading over to the science museum. The museum was huge and even had a giant planetarium. It had exhibits on everything from mechanics to genetics to weather. Everything was hands on and we had a lot of fun looking around. After a few hours of wandering the museum, we took the subway to the movie theater to see ベイマックス (Baymax, the Japanese title for Big Hero 6). It only recently came out here in Japan and Mike and I both really wanted to see it. It was only playing in Japanese in Kokura, so we decided to see it in Nagoya where they were playing an English version. We both really enjoyed the movie! Afterwards, we went to another restaurant we'd seen from our hotel called 花火 (Hanabi, Fireworks). It was a Korean BBQ style restaurant and it was incredible! The staff was incredibly nice and it was easily the best Korean BBQ style restaurant I've ever been to in Japan. We had a few after dinner drinks at a place called Presto that Mike found. It was a coffee shop and cafe by day and a bar by night. It had some great drinks and we happily headed back to the hotel after a few.

We slept in on Monday and had an early lunch in lieu of breakfast. We decided to try another Nagoya specialty; Their most famous food, 味噌カツ (miso katsu, fried pork with a miso sauce). It was really good! After lunch we caught the subway to Osu to check out the famous shopping streets and we stopped by the temple in the area. We found some cool little shops, one of which was a place called Alice on Wednesdays that you needed a ticket to get into because the shop was so small. The door was shrunk so you had to bend over to get in and there were little peep-hole all around the inside and outside of the shop that showed different scenes from Alice in Wonderland. We ended up being able to go in and although it was mostly jewelry and ribbons and not much we wanted, we got some candy and enjoyed the novelty of it. We had a small snack at the market before jumping back on the subway to go to see Nagoya castle. Once we got there, we found out the castle was closed for the holidays and we couldn't go into the courtyard, but we walked the perimeter and could see the castle from outside. We found a craft beer restaurant, appropriately named 23 Draft Beer, and had a quick drink before deciding to head back to our hotel area for dinner. I was pretty tired and it had gotten a bit late, so we went to an Indian restaurant in the station for dinner before heading to bed.

We'd been doing a lot the past few days, so we decided to rest on Tuesday. We ventured out for lunch around noon and walked around until we found a place that was open. What we found was an English restaurant that had really great pickled tomatoes. After lunch we did a bit of souvenir shopping and some more walking around the city. We got a little snack on the way back to the hotel at the same chicken restaurant from our first day and we spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing. We went out again for dinner to an izakaya with many Nagoya specialties. This was our last night in Nagoya and we had some extra energy from our relaxing day, so we decided to try some of the different places around our hotel. First we went to a jazz bar called Baseline that had a live jazz piano player. He played a lot of jazz versions of Disney songs that were actually really good. Next we found a place called Mike's Corner that we figured we had to try. Unfortunately it was a bit disappointing, so we quickly moved on to Handcrafted. We were worried it was full, but there was an upstairs room with one table by the window still open. Handcrafted had great drinks and small food plates, plus the whole place was really cute! After a few drinks we went back to Back Forty since it was near our hotel and finished the night there.

We woke up early Wednesday to check out of the hotel. We left our bags at the front desk and caught the bus back to Nagashima Spa Land. We spent the morning at the amusement park and finally got to ride the Steel Dragon 2000! It was great fun and totally worth the wait! Thankfully there weren't many people so early in the morning and we could go on twice with almost no wait. We rode all the rides we had liked the first time around and even had time to do the Pokemon Adventure Camp again before heading back to Nagoya to catch our train back to Kokura. This was the 31st, so it was a HUGE travel day, but thankfully Mike and I both got seats on the shinkansen back. We dropped our bags off at my apartment before going out to meet some friends at KFC to celebrate New Years. I'm still not sure why they chose KFC, but we got the all-you-can-drink option and stayed there until about 10:00 PM. Patrick, Dave, Leah, Mike, and I split off a little early and went to Riverwalk to have some food from the 屋台 (yatai, traveling food stalls) set up for New Years. We had お好み焼き (okonomiyaki) and 焼き鳥 (yakitori) while we waited for the countdown. Around 11:30 PM, everyone else decided to go to another bar, but Mike and I were tired from our morning or riding roller coasters, so we stayed at Riverwalk. We ended up grabbing some Krispy Kreme doughnuts and heading home to watch a live stream of the countdown in Tokyo. We stayed up just past midnight, but feel asleep shortly after.

On New Years day we were still tired from our traveling and decided to have a quite morning. We made breakfast and rested before heading out in the afternoon to shop for a gift for one of my teachers. We grabbed lunch while we were out and then headed back home. We went out again later to meet Caol, Ruth (a friend of Caol's visiting from Ireland), and Leah at the Irish pub, Booties. Mike said he really wanted some of the fugu (pufferfish) fish and chips Booties serves and Caol wanted to bring Ruth to see the place. Dinner was delicious and after we all finished up we went over to karaoke. We sang for about two hours before going home a bit early.

The next morning Mike and I headed over to Mihagino bus stop where we meet Juha and Kyoko. Takako, an old co-worker of mine who Juha now works with, came to pick us up and we drove to Beppu! She was the same teacher who drove my family down last January and I was really glad to be traveling with her again! We got in around lunch time and decided to go to the same restaurant we'd gone to last year where they cook all your food in the natural steam from the underground hot springs. We even got to try drinking a little of the hot spring water after it cooled, it was very salty. We had meat, seafood, and veggies and it was just as good as last year. After lunch we went to three of the eight "Hells" and they were extra active! We didn't know why, but they were steaming and bubbling much more than normal. We walked around the Hells for about an hour before going to our first hot spring of the day. Takako suggested this one and it was a mud onsen rather than a normal bath. There were three pools and a steam room. The first pool had minerals in it that made the water murky and was supposed to lighten your skin color. The second was full of mud to rub on yourself and the last had the same minerals as the first, but was outside. It was a very unusual onsen because the outside pool was for both men and women, without bathing suits! There was a separate outside pool for only women, but the men had to walk by to get to their pool! Thankfully the water was murky enough that you couldn't see through it. We stayed in the onsen for about an hour before meeting back up with the men in the lobby area. Mike had finished his first onsen and said he liked it! We drank the traditional coffee milk after the bath. Don't ask me why it's common to drink milk or coffee milk after onsen because I have no idea, but it was very good. We headed over to our hotel after that before meeting up with Caol and Ruth, who had come down to Beppu by train in the afternoon. It was evening by the time we met them, so we decided to grab some dinner. Caol goes to Beppu often and it is his favorite place in Japan, so he took us to a Korean BBQ restaurant he likes to go to. The food and drinks were good and we decided to go to one more onsen before heading back to the hotel. We went to a nice place on the beach. It was Ruth's first time at the onsen, so I walked her through the steps. There were a few small baths inside as well as one outside. The one outside had kabosu fruit in it and it smelled wonderful. Ruth was a bit nervous when we first got in, but really enjoyed it once she got used to it! We stayed in the bath for about an hour before meeting back up with the boys and heading back to the hotel for some sleep.

We met Juha and Takako for breakfast in the morning. Kyoko had to visit her family in Miyazaki and had taken the first train in the morning. She left close to 6:00 AM, so we had said goodbye the night before. We had a good breakfast in Beppu station despite only one shop being open and decided to head to 高崎山 (Takasaki Yama, Takasaki Mountain) next. We checked out of the hotel and Mike, Juha, and I gave Takako the presents we had gotten for her two days earlier. Takasaki Mountain was only about a ten minutes drive, so we got there fast. Over 1500 wild monkeys live there and workers feed the monkeys at the base of the mountain to keep the monkeys there instead of taking food from nearby farmers. The monkeys come down in groups and the workers know many of the monkeys' personalities and characteristics. People can visit and learn about the monkeys close to their natural habitat. Obviously we weren't supposed to touch them because they're still wild animals, but they would run around under your feet and sit close to you. We even saw one monkey sneak up behind and woman and try to get into her purse, probably looking for food. The workers feed the monkeys grains every half hour and sweet potatoes once a day. During the feeding they threw the food away from them and ran the other direction, but but the monkeys would still follow them. It was really funny and a bit scary! We had a lot of fun and stayed for over two hours before driving back to the city and meeting Caol and Ruth for lunch. We had a nice lunch and headed home afterwards with a quick stop for some pumpkin and vanilla ice cream on the way back. Mike and I got home around 5:00 PM and packed for our respective trips and set out for Hakata in Fukuoka city. We made it to Hakata by 7:00 PM and checked into the Clio Court Hotel. We were happy to find it just across the street! A great deal of a hotel and the room was really nice. We had お好み焼き (okonomiyaki) for dinner and then had an early night.

Mike's flight home was at 7:20 AM the next morning, so we woke up early to get to the airport. I went with him until security and then headed back to the hotel for breakfast. I stayed in until 10:00 AM when I met Patrick in Hakata station to head back to the airport for our trip to Sapporo. I'm finish up this post from the airport, but there's no internet here so I won't be posting this until I get to the hotel in Sapporo. I hope Mike is having a good flight home! Sorry for the length of this post, I've been very busy! Next update will probably be next Tuesday or Wednesday when I get back to school and that will be full of news from snowy Sapporo so stay tuned!