So, this Saturday, thanks to beautiful weather (no rain again on a Saturday?? is it the end of the world??!?) Cassidy and I headed off for Nagoya, where we planned to go the Nagoya castle, a huge Totoro/Ghibli store, and just generally wander around for the day. Starting out for Hikone station at 8am, we got there and boarded a train for Maibara, a station one stop away to the east, and also the closest place that you can pick up the Shinkansen. Once there we got onto a local train bound for Nagoya. I got a few postcards written during the hour or so train ride. Got to Nagoya station and we immediately transferred over to the subway system so that we could go to Nagoya castle. Only a few stops later and we had reached Nagoya castle, which was originally built in the late 1500’s, only to be firebombed during WWII and rebuilt, this time with an elevator! Yes, it seemed a little less authentic now that it had an elevator inside of it. Getting onto the castle grounds (a 500yen fee, naturally), we took a bunch of pictures of ourselves being dwarfed by the massive 8-story castle. Walking around the grounds of the castle, there was some sort of flower show being held. There were bonsai and also other kinds of flowers unknown to me. The inner moat of the castle had been drained, and instead of water, this one held deer! Once inside of the castle, I was quite disappointed to find the inside of it completely modernized. Besides the few items being held behind glass, you’d never know that you were inside of a castle. Eventually we got up to the top floor (which, for some reason, the elevator only went up to the 6th floor, and not the 7th), where it was SO HOT. The weather was starting to get almost too nice, and the 70F sunlight was streaming inside the windows and staying put. We got a lot of nice pictures of the trees that were starting to change color outside of the castle, as well as all the surrounding high-rise buildings. Then Cassidy made me (yes, twisted my arm even (no, not really )) into buying another one of the engravable coins, only this one was long and 500yen more.

Leaving the castle grounds, we managed to leave via the exit farthest away from the subway station, again. We had decided that after the castle we would check out Sakae, the entertainment/shopping district of Nagoya. Once we got in the station and bought our tickets however, we had a slightly hairy moment where Cassidy thought she had lost her camera. We searched up and down the station, and she had to ask the station attendant if she could leave the gates to go search for it. As I raced back to the platform to double-check, Cassidy talked to the station attendant who, for some reason, didn’t reveal until several minutes later that he, in fact, had her camera. One thing you can always count on in Japan is that people are generally very thoughtful when they come across misplaced valuables. You will always hear people say things about how is you lose your wallet in Japan, you’ll always get it back with all the money in it. Luckily, this seems to be the case. So, getting the camera back, we got back into the station (they didn’t make us buy new tickets), and got off at Sakae. When we got out of the station, we were in yet another one of these underground malls/subway stations. This one happened to be called Central Park. We stopped at a sushi place for some lunch, and thanks to a very nice woman working there I was able to order some very tasty freshwater eel (anagi) sushi, and Cassidy was unfortunate enough to get (yet again! sorry Cassidy..) wasabi-filled cucumber rolls. Leaving the underground mall, we made it through an exit only to find ourselves in the midst of some kind of art fair going on. It seemed like it was a family event, because there were booths all around with cute craft projects for kids (things like designing your own puzzles, making pinwheels, tie-dying fabric, etc). Looking up above where this show was going on, we were surprised to find a canopy made of glass with water on top of it. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. You could even go up a stairway and walk around on top of the pool. The water was only about 6 inches deep, but the bottom of the pool was glass so you could see through it and look at what everyone was doing some 30 feet below. The whole area was called Oasis 21, and it was very cool indeed. From the pool you could also see the Nagoya TV Tower, which would be our next stop. Before that however, I had spied a Mother Garden store (Sirotan land!) before we had gone up to see the canopy, so we (well, *I*) decided that we must stop there. Now I haven’t mentioned this yet, but for the past month and a half or so, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the new alligator Sirotan, and as of last week, Cassidy had to go to Kyoto on a class trip, and she stopped by the Mother Garden store there to find that they were finally in! So on this trip, all I picked up was a miniaturized, cellphone-screen-cleaner version of the alligator Sirotan. Leaving the store, I was shocked and pleased to find an NHK character shop next door. NHK is a television network in Japan, who’s mascot is Domo-kun. Domo-kun is a favorite of mine, so I was sooo happy to not only find another keychain of him (I had one previously hanging from my purse, but he sadly fell off only about a week before I came to Japan), as well as a small plushie of Domo-kun that I had always drooled over in ebay auctions, but never indulged in. Next door to this was an anime store, but at that point and before of the fact that I was going to *the* Totoro store later in the day, I decided it would be best not to go inside…..

So we kept walking around for a while, and tried to find the Nagoya TV Tower. First we went into the NHK building by mistake, but once we got back outside, we were able to find it pretty easily. While it was unfortunately under construction, we were still able to go up in it, at the tune of 750yen (yikes! but so far I’ve been to Kyoto Tower, Tokyo Tower, the Osaka Sky Building…so I’m trying to go for all the towers in Japan). The views were quite nice, and we were able to see all of ‘Central Park’, which really did resemble its name sake in New York (not that I’ve actually been there…). The trees were also starting to change color a little bit, so it was a really pretty sight. Cassidy was able to find another one of her coins, and after that we left. We walked a little bit more through the trees and ponds of ‘Central Park’, and eventually came upon some sort of impromptu concert going on at one of the entrances to the subway.

We hopped onto the subway, and since we had time to kill, we decided to ride the loop line the long way around, since hey, its the same price, and riding the subway is just plain fun. 5 or 6 stops later, we noticed that everyone was getting off the train. Someone told us しゅうてん, which means last train, so we had to get off, at a stop called Ozone of all things (that’s pronounces oh-zo-neh in Japanese, but its still cool). Then, we had to get on another train going the way we had just came. Luckily we still got a seat, and were able to take a short nap before arriving at the stop for Jingu-mae station, so that we could visit Atsuta Shrine, one of the most important Shinto shrines in Japan, unfortunately at that point, we didn’t know it was so important. There were a lot of families bringing their young children for the three-five-seven festivals (for when a girl turns 3 or 5, and a boy turns 5 or 7), and there was even a wedding taking place. The shrine, however, was a little on the dull side, and so we only spent a little time there before hopping on the subway again.

At this point we couldn’t figure out what else we should do, so we decided to head over to the Totoro store to spend mass quantities. This was where the real adventure began… We caught the subway and headed towards Yagoto. Note, this is the station that someone at a tourist information booth told us to go to to find the Totoro store, and is also the station that I got off the Totoro store’s website. The store was inside of a mall called JUSCO. Leaving the station we found JUSCO to be connected to it. So we started looking for the store. We couldn’t find it on the directory, but we figured that was just because the directory was entirely in Japanese. We look around every floor, going up the escalators to the top and circling around until we came back to the bottom floor. The Totoro store was nowhere in sight. Figuring that we had just missed it somewhere, I asked someone working there about it. They looked at me with a puzzled expression. Uh oh. Asking a colleague and making a phone call resulted in me being told that we were in the wrong JUSCO. So the woman wrote down on a piece of paper for me the train station that I had to get to to find the store, along with the phone number. So, frustrated, we headed back to the subway station (but, not before stopping at a bakery and picking up some tasty morsels). Thing is, the woman had only written down “JR Line, Kasugai Station”, which really wasn’t helpful since we were on the subway, which isn’t run by JR. So, we had to talk to person #3 (first at the information center, then at JUSCO..), a station attendant, on how to find the JR line. He told us to take the subway back to Ozone, and from there we could transfer to the JR line. Ok so, back onto the subway we went. We get to Ozone, we leave the subway station, and we try to find the JR station. We walk into something that we think is the JR station, but we aren’t sure. So we ask person #4, another station attendant, on how to find JR Ozone station. He points us to an elevator, and we end up about 5 feet from where we originally left the subway station. Ah well.

Finally making it to JR Kasugai station, we walk through the gates expecting to see the store in front of us. Instead, we see nothing. A dead zone. So, we ask person #5 (yet another station attendant) on how to find the JUSCO. He said a lot of things to me, but the one word that stuck out the most was “taxi”. Yes, we had to take a freaking taxi to get to the store. When asked about how far it was away by taxi, he told us about 10 minutes. 20 minutes roundtrip in a taxi in Japan is, let me put it this way, expensive. Since we had already gotten this far, and because (according to the website) the store was going to be amazing, I took an at least 15 minute, 1750yen taxi ride to a department store. Yes, I must be insane. If we hadn’t been stuck behind an incredibly slow freight train, the trip would have probably cost me about 750yen less. Finally getting to the correct JUSCO (we HOPED), and feeling quite frustrated at this point, we scanned the store directory and found the store on the 2nd floor. It was quite a lot smaller than the website had depicted it. It was quite disappointing to see, and if I had known just how it really was, probably I wouldn’t have gone since they accept online orders. But, I’ve put of buying any slightly exotic Totoro items for the past several years just because buying them through a third party from Japanese auctions would have been cost prohibitive. So, Cassidy went off to shop at a nearby sports store, while I perused the goods.

I walked around its 4 little aisles half a dozen times, but then I dragged Cassidy back from the store to give me some shopping support (XD) as I continued my spree. I won’t bore you with the details of every little thing I bought, just know that I finally got the Totoro umbrella I’ve always wanted, as well as a very very nice Totoro fleece blanket. Sadly they didn’t have any Totoro slippers my size (ginormous gaijin size), otherwise I would have gotten some of those too. The women working at the counter was pretty much bending over in order to help me spend my money (I’m sure she was thinking that some crazy gaijin was here to buy half the store), and when I was finally done, she gave me a little card (one of those frequent buyer cards), which, because of what I had bought, was already completly filled out, so I could get 1000yen off a future purchase. So fine then, just encourage me to buy more! Not that I needed help…. Throughout, Cassidy was enjoying herself by taking pictures of the somewhat embarrassed obsessive Totoro collector. I’m not really sure how much time I spent there, probably an hour. After it was all over, I had one massive bag and one medium sized bag. How I was going to get it all back to JCMU on my bicycle was a mystery. Leaving the Totoro store, we wandered around the mall a little more, and found many stores with incredibly cheap (for Japan) clothing, some with some hilarious engrish. I regret now not getting a particularly crazy sweatshirt for 1000yen, but at that point I had pretty much sworn off buying anything for the next 10 years. We then found a store selling puzzles, some of which were Totoro puzzles. They also had these very cute picture frames (that are meant to hold the finished, glued puzzle, a common thing to do in Japan) carved with designs from Totoro. Cassidy twisted my arm into buying yet another Totoro item, and this time she got one too. We continued walking around for a while until we started to get hungry, so we stopped at a McDonalds on the first floor of the mall for some food (I had originally planned on getting the Japan-exclusive “Ebi Filet-O”, a new shrimp burger, but I didn’t…). After eating we wandered around the bottom floor of the mall for a while, trying to find the main exit again, and praying that there would be a cab outside of it. Luckily, there was! There was no other way for us to get back to the subway station, but I was hoping and praying that this trip wouldn’t be stalled by any trains. Luckily, it wasn’t, and it only cost us about 1150yen that time.

Hopping back on the train, we made it back to Nagoya station around 10pm. In recent excursions, we have always bought out tickets beforehand at a discount ticket seller, but usually we end up not using them since the station that they are to be use for (Nagoya, Kyoto, etc), we always get to it via some other train line, and thus don’t have to go through any kind of ticket gate to transfer to the line that would take us back to Hikone. On this trip though, we wanted to make sure that our tickets were punched because otherwise we couldn’t make them into おみやげ (souvenirs). However, once we got back to Nagoya station, we found that the next train leaving to Maibara (one stop before Hikone) was an express, and was leaving in 2 minutes. So, in order to catch the express, we decided to not validate our tickets. This move, as you’ll see, probably saved us a good 1500yen. Getting back to Maibara station around 10:50pm, we found the place particularly deserted. We got to the platform where we could catch the train for Hikone, and found that the next train was going to be the LAST TRAIN. Of the night. And it was going to arrive in about 10 minutes. If we had validated our tickets and missed the express train, we would have been taking a cab to get back to JCMU. Then, our bikes would still have been stuck at Hikone station, so we would have gotten to walk to the station to retrieve them, and also have to pay a late fee to the bicycle lot since they were only supposed to be there for one day. So, from now on, we know that 10:59pm on the weekends is the last train going from Maibara to Hikone. We were very happy to know that we had lucked out on making it back in time.

Making it back to JCMU around 11:30, I started to Totoro-ize my room. Cassidy came over and took some more pictures of me with my stuff. The blanket is now on my bed, and it is really really cute. Very soft too. I’m very glad that I got it. The umbrella, however, is my favorite. I’ll be waiting until I get back to the states to use it however. I haven’t done the puzzle yet, but maybe I will tonight. My Totoro noren has also been hung up, and is great. Ok…that’s it for now….

Nagoya Castle:

Sitting on a replica of a fish that sits on top of the roof of the castle (seen as good luck to prevent fires), as a nice mosaic of the castle:

Flowers on display at Nagoya Castle, and Nagoya TV Tower:

Views of Oasis 21, the craft show going on underneath, and from Nagoya TV Tower:

Cassidy buying another one of her coins:

Ozone! And a group wedding picture:

The Totoro store: (notice the wallet in hand and eager look on the store keeper’s face….)