Nagoya

The last time I was in the vicinity of Nagoya, Lindsey, Judy Frangos and I went to Noritake Gardens to admire the china and pottery and other ceramics in their rather large shop.  I quite fancied another look around so yesterday Austin, The Builder and I took ourselves on the train into Nagoya (leaving Kaori and Tatsuki Home Alone) and made our way to Noritake. Alas, the dinosaurs that had surprised us last time weren't there yesterday.  You can see that the pond dinosaurs might have found the water temperature a bit chilly, but I was surprised that the large ones weren't in the car park.  But a very helpful man (who assured us that he couldn't speak English though it sounded remarkably like English to us when he spoke!) told us that the dinosaurs only ever come out to play in August. We had been very lucky the last time that we had happened to be there in August!!

So we had a nice potter about in the china shop and then wandered off to another part of Nagoya where we had some lunch, visited the Apple store, played about in Loft (one of those department stores which is absolutely stuffed full of things that you had no idea that you needed until you wandered in to have a look. A bit like Lakeland only more than just kitchen things), went to a Walt Disney exhibition which was in the Museum of Arts on the top storey of another department store and then made our way back towards the station.

We were a bit too early for the English Bar so had a coffee first, and then invaded the bar (where we had had gruesomely coloured cocktails when we were here for Austin and Kaori's wedding). Pints of gin and tonic for me, pints of vodka and ginger ale for The Builder and various different things in various different shades of colour for Austin, darts for Austin and The Builder. Then it was time for food, in a tonkatsu restaurant high above the station.

And s back home, where Kaori and Tatsuki seemed quite pleased to see us.

It's our last day here today and we have passed it very quietly. We've been out to lunch (a remarkably nice burger, which you more or less cook yourself on a little hot stone on your plate; it came seared but not cooked). The Builder and Austin are out now playing pool. Then we'll make a final dash to the supermarket so I can cook something with mash this evening.

Our visit with Austin and Kaori has gone extraordinarily quickly.  Hardly seems any time since we arrived!

Click on the crumbed prawns to get to the album