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.