Had a few days in “motor city” Nagoya which is the home of Toyota, Pachinko, Miso flavoured everything, fish on a castle and it’s very own haircut: the “Nagoya Maki” which is a long curly business. H also told me of special themed cafes like the Viking one or one with a trampoline in the middle.

We met some lovely Nagoyans who showed us around and of course the food was the thing. We had Miso flavoured udon noodles, Tebayaki chicken wings (I learned how to eat them in one bite), proper sushi (it’s all in the way you pat the fish onto the rice apparently) but the highlight was Houraiken eel restaurant.

H says it’s the best and was excited for weeks in advance and she doesn’t even like eel! But I do and so I arrived there at 11:15 am, a quarter of an hour before it opened and already there was a queue of 30 people. I ordered extra large Himmabushi which was a wooden bowl of filleted and grilled eel in their secretly ingrediented Teriyaki sauce and a pot of green tea so you can make a soup out of it which I did. The web site tells you exactly how to eat it but I managed to work it out by copying my neighbour once she had photographed her lunch from every angle. Good? Yes it was. It was really very good. A lot better than avin em in jelly anyhow.


Nagoya Castle. If you look carefully you can see that "hello kitty" is showing us Nagoya's speciality foods on my new sweat-towel.

Remember Nick Clark, Gordonsgonetojapan's photographer? Well he took some great shots when he was here in December and one of them is this one of a monk. We went to see him yesterday to get his permission for Nick to use his photos which the monk was happy to do. His father owns the temple which is a large one in the middle of a busy shopping district and he, after a gruelling year's training at the centre of his sect, is now in charge. He showed us the perfect garden with its stone steps, raked gravel and bamboo grove and it was impossible to imagine what was outside as we stood with him there in contemplation.

You can see more of nick's photos at http://www.nickclark.co.uk

I saw a woman with a T-shirt saying,

No Shirt
No Shorts
No Juicey

Post-feminist dogma or what? I can't quite get my head around it. There's lots of funny English on T-shirts. Mind you, H says she sees lots of funny Japanese on English T-shirts.

It's Hanabi season! Everyone dresses up in their Yukata (long gowns for men, a lighter style of kimono for women) and goes out to watch the fireworks, drink a beer and eat some food from the food stalls.

If you look carefully...

I went with H's family to lake Yamanaka where, apart from Hanabi we also enjoyed Christmas World, Doggy Park, a nice Ryokan and, of course, great views of Mount Fuji which is right near.