I feel like I’m taking a bath every time I walk out the door each morning. While the temperature is fairly close to that in Minneapolis, the humidity is much more intense and palpable. It’s hard to believe that people are walking about in jeans and cardigans in this kind of weather. Everyone is glistening with sweat, dabbing their foreheads with handkerchiefs or fanning themselves on the train. I, of course, have made it no secret how incredibly uncomfortable the heat is and, due to my self introduction to the rest of the international students, have come to be identified as the over-heated American. I’m not at all ashamed either! In spite of the heat, the weather here is truly beautiful. It’s so easy to enjoy walking around the neighborhoods and exploring Nagoya a bit.
My good friend, who is currently part of the JET Program (Japanese Exchange and Teaching Program), came to stay with me over the weekend from Shizuoka. We hadn’t seen each other since about July so it was really fun to reunited in Japan! Mostly, we walked around the city, both sightseers in Nagoya. The university isn’t much to look at, but the neighborhoods here are all different and interesting. On Saturday, we met up at Yagoto station and took the train back to my dorm. Mostly we ate konbini food and hung out at the apartment, but we did take the time to go to Motoyama and walk around a bit.
Orange and chocolate doughnut and a cherry & cream cronut (croissant/doughtnut)
Ever since my friend got to Japan, she’s been raving about Mr. Donut, a popular cafe/bakery where doughnuts are obviously the specialty. It was my first time having a cronut and, let me tell you, I was not disappointed! Seriously. Most delicious things ever. It’s like a crispy, pop over, doughnut with delicious cream and fruit inside! Somebody better make a 0 calorie version immediately so I can eat them everyday.
After Mr. Donut, we aimlessly wandered a bit and came across a nice little park with a large pond and later made it somehow to the Higashiyama Zoo, but didn’t end up being able to go. It looked like a pretty cool zoo from the outside complete with ferris wheel and a raised tram that possibly went around the whole zoo. Hopefully we can do back at some point!
Then Sunday, I went with a few friends to the Nagoya Science Museum to see a show at the planetarium, and to walk around downtown for a while. Downtown Nagoya was really a strange experience, or rather different than I expected. It’s not like the images of big cities like Tokyo that you see, but there’s no denying how large Nagoya city actually is. The streets are wide and sidewalks spacious. People mill about in between shops and office buildings. It’s the typical intercity dynamics where business workers, teenagers, and families make their way through the streets. The buildings are a bit different than I anticipated. Not quite as towering, not quite as overwhelming, not covered with television screens or giant advertisements. It’s a bit like downtown Minneapolis but perhaps with out as many glass-faced buildings. Nevertheless, it is a nice enough place and the streets are much cleaner than those in the States. While we were there, we went to the Sakae station where a lot of shops are situated. The stations are a lot like underground strip malls and a lot of people meet or congregate there. From the station we went to a place called Oasis 21.
Shopping center with a watery reflection pool as the roof
There were many shops there and seemed to be some sort of market going on beneath the water roof of the mall. I didn’t have much of a chance to take photos since it was rather crowded but everyone seemed to be having a good time buying all of the fancy stone and wood wears. We also went to the top of Oasis 21 to see the view from above. The water part of the roof isn’t deep–perhaps only four inches or so–but it’s reflection of the sun is really beautiful and adds an interesting element of architectural design to the cityscape. From the top, we could also see what I think was Central Park (like NYC) which was really beautiful also.
Then, we went to the Nagoya Science Museum. We didn’t walk around the museum too much since we had walked around downtown a bit beforehand. It was rather dark inside but the displays were cool. A lot of the museum had to do with typical engineering products from and in Japan like trains and boats and such. Most of it was so familiar to Duluth that I wasn’t really that interested in that portion of the museum, but a lot of the planetary and astrology exhibits were very cool. Of course, it was all in Japanese so I had to guess a lot of it by my prior knowledge and the images shown. The planetarium show was a 50 minute display of a few constellations visible in the Japanese sky and how a lunar eclipse happens. (One is coming October 8th!) While I understood about 1/4 of the show, it was really interesting to see how different the placement of the stars was.
When everyone was tired and the day was done we all went our separate ways and the week had to start. Not much has happened since then. Mainly just orientation things for the university. I’ll be registering with my school later this afternoon and a few of my classes should be starting tomorrow. I’ll check in later with an update on the beginning of classes!
A Little Slack in Japan 