Exploring Nagoya's Downtown

Since it was Saturday, I finally decided to do some touristy stuff.  So I grabbed my camera and headed to the city.  On the way I took some pictures of the university campus I'm staying at and the neighbourhood.

I also took some pictures of the train station - at around 10am it wasn't busy at all.

This picture shows the time it takes to get to stations on the same line - so it looks like it takes around 45 minutes to do the whole circle.

I got off at the station near the Nagoya Castle.  I went towards the entrence of the castle but didn't go in - maybe tomorrow.

Then I started heading towards the Sakae district which is basically downtown Nagoya and is known for shopping.  Along the route was the Nagoya City Hall:

and the head office of the Aichi Prefecture:

What Nagoya doesn't lack is tourist information such as this board:

In the distance, I could see the towers of the Nagoya train station (coming up a bit later):

The temperature display at the top of this building showed the 36C.  It was supposed to be 38C and it probably was later on in the day.  However, it wasn't overly humid so it didn't feel all that bad.

The location of the Mikokoro Catholic Church:

The buildings started to get bigger getting closer to Sakae.  In the distance you can see the TV tower that is one of the original landmarks of the district (and has an observation deck which I have to visit in the future).

Vending machines with drinks were roughly on each block so there was always easy access to drinks (which definitely helped with the dehydration due to the heat).  My favourite so far is the peach drink sold in metal bottles - so delicious :P.

Now I was basically nearing the Sakae subway station.

The large wheel is part of the Sunshine Sakae building which is interesting for various reasons.

First of all, you can actually get on the wheel just like in an amusement park.

Second, it has among a few other shops, a huge store called Tsutaya that offers used CDs, DVDs, Manga, and video games to rent - look at the collection of manga!!

It also houses Sunshine Studio which is a theatre where the popular Nagoya based idol group SKE48 (sister group to the Akihabara, Tokyo based AKB48).  The SKE in the name stands for SaKaE just like the AKihaBara in AKB.  I didn't get to see any idols - that's for later on.

A little bit further in Sakae, I found a large HMV with a pretty big AKB48 and SKE48 merchandise collection.  A whole wall of SKE48 girl posters on the wall:

Advertisement of the newest AKB48 single which already sold over 600,000 copies in a little over 2 weeks of sales:

HMV has some nice selection of music including Hello!Project groups like Berryz Kobou and Morning Musume.

Continuing a little bit further, I found the Nagoya Apple store (looks like an Apple store :P):

I went into one large shopping mall which has some nice collection of designer label stores like GUCCI, CHANEL, and Dolce & Gabana amongst many others.

This picture shows the interesting diagonal crossings that you see here often:

One interesting thing about this mall was one floor that basically only had about 30 small counter stores that sold japanese sweets of various kinds.  I resisted buying anything for now :P.  I did, however, have a  delicious croissant type pastry which was packed in two plastic bags with a wet napkin.

I ate it by this park.

I continued walking, passing through a few malls trying to find someplace to eat.

Just as expected, Japan has some cute advertisements!

You can see the Sakae TV Tower in the middle of this picture:

Now, I started walking towards the Nagoya train station.

At some point I crossed a nice canal.

This interesting building is one of the 4 Nagoya downtown skyscrapers.  It is the Mode Gakuen Spiral Towers - a 36storey educational facility.

The 2 towers of the Nagoya train station are visible in the distance.

The remaining skyscraper is the tallest in Nagoya and 5th in all of Japan.  The Midland Square building houses many stores and the highest open air observation platform in Japan.

I finally managed to get to the twin towers of the Nagoya train station (housed below the towers).  The two towers are the 2nd and 3rd tallest buildings in Nagoya.  The train station is the largest in the world by floor area.

The area around and inside the train station did have a lot of people.  However, in general I did not find Nagoya streets (even the busy Sakae) to have that many people.  HK was much much busier!  I was starving so I sat down in one of the restaurance inside the station and had some nice sushi and a beer.

I walked a few streets beyond the train station in order to find the Hello!Project museum/shop which I did not find (I guess it was closed).  

This neighbourhood seemed a bit poorer, especially compared to the area between Sakae and the train station.

Finally, I got back to the Nagoya train station and took the train to my apartment.  After a few hours of rest, I went to the nearby mall and had some tasty katsu for dinner.  The scary thing is, what I got looked exactly like the plastic replica outside the store!  I also went to the supermarket and bought some rice, bread and butter so that I can actually eat something at home!