Bike Ride along Tsuruma Subway Line (west)

Today's biking trip was along the west part of the Tsuruma subway line - which is one of the 4 subway lines in Nagoya.  Here is the map of most of the trip:

The recorded part was around 45km (plus about 4km to get back home from the last position).

We started off biking from the Kawana subway station (on the Tsuruma line - around the 3km mark on the above map). Somewhere along the way, we found this gothic? style building which turned out to be built to hold weddings. Nagoya is known for its totally fairytale-like weddings (with a very high cost!).

We made a small detour to go through Tsuruma Park (around 7-9km on the map).  Here are the trees along the main entrance alleyway:

 A shallow pond with some nice trees:

 The park (as with many parks in Nagoya) has many statues.  Here is one with some flowers.  You can see the Nagoya University Hospital in the background - part of the medical campus of Nagoya University.

 The roses in the rose garden were blooming:

So many!

 Many people were walking around taking pictures of them - they also smelled really good:

 These were really big:

 A closeup - I really need a better camera (like an SLR):

 A pond in the park:

 Very Japanese!  There are some metal statues of cranes and a turtle.  There were also many live turtles there.

 In another part of the park, there was a large fields with Irises.

 Here is a closeup of one:

 So much green - and some people enjoying the good weather in the park:

 A turtle sun bathing by a lake:

Around the 12km mark, we went through OSU - I had to stop to get a tasty fish pastry.  This time, it was matcha mochi (green tea paste with mochi inside):

At some point (about 16km mark), we biked near the Nagoya castle - seen here:

 On some random street, we found this fountain:

 Continuing into a small spring and a pathway:

 At around 20km, we reached the Shonai river (in the north of Nagoya).  There was a man made waterfall (or a dam?) there:

 One older man was fishing with several rods:

 The river looking to the west:

 Towards the east - you can see the really tall apartment building we went by later (around 30km mark):

 And looking back towards the city, you can kind of see the Nagoya train station buildings sticking out to the right of the big lightly green tree:

 While we were there, the man caught something:

 He was pulling it in for a few minutes - it looked like he was enjoying it.  You can see the fish at the bottom of the picture (probably a koi/carp):

 When he got it close to him, he released it:

 There was a fish ladder on the lake (you can also see a bird sitting on it):

 Close up of the fish ladder (minus the bird - flew away?):

Around the 22km mark, we reached the end of the Tsuruma subway line - the Kamiotai station.  From that point, we started to go back towards home (albeit on a totally different route).  Near the station, around the 23km mark, there was a huge AEON mall (the biggest mall I have seen in Nagoya with 3 levels).

We decided to get something to eat since we were hungry:

 After some long searching we finally settled for some sughi.  Here is a small sample:

 The meal ended with a tasty matcha (green tea) ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins:

 In a park (around the 27-28km mark) we found this pond with some old looking buildings:

 Some people were fishing in it:

 The sign next to the building told a story about the pond (around 16th century):

 From there, we continued towards home using some smaller roads.  Got slightly lost around the 39-41km mark and basically backtracked down a hill for no reason and then had to go back up the hill again.  But we made it to university and had some delicious spicy Chinese food.  A long but enjoyable trip.

On a slightly related note, I clicked over 1000km (close to 1300km now) since I started to record my biking with my phone.  Probably means that I should do some maintenance on the poor bike! :P