Day 2: Nagoya Castle

Let me rephrase that. If you take away the embarrassment of being in the car with Yasuko's father and not being able to talk much with him, it was an almost exhilarating experience for me to finally be there, taking pictures of this completely new world while being driven around this amazing city in a cool convertible Mercedes! An experience I will never forget!

Nagoya is the third-largest incorporated city in Japan. It is the capital of Aichi Prefecture and one of Japan's major ports. 2.5 million people live in the city, and almost 9 million in the surrounding metropolitan area.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that the drive from the residential area where Yasuko's parents live to the center of the city took almost an hour.

One of the most surprising features of the city, for me, were the elevated expressways that crisscross the entire city, running above some of the major streets. Nagoya City has been confirmed to have two active faults running through it, which are believed capable of causing an earthquake of over M7.

The Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995 was M7.3, and it killed over 6,000 people in the city of Kobe. With the graphic images of the collapsed elevated Hanshin Expressway that made the front pages of newspapers worldwide still in my eyes, I would not have expected to find elevated highways in Nagoya.

Most people in Japan believed those structures to be relatively safe from earthquake damage because of their steel-reinforced concrete design. It was later shown that most of the collapsed structures had been built properly according to the building codes in force in the 1960s. However, the steel-reinforcement specifications in the 1960s regulations had already been found inadequate and had been revised several times, the latest revision being in 1981, which proved effective but only when applied to new structures. That is the case for the Nagoya elevated expressways, which in some places even run on two different levels, as shown in the picture below.

Had it been up to me, we could have just kept driving around town, but Masao had a destination in mind: the famous Nagoya Castle, in the center of the city.

Once we reached the castle, we parked the car and, before entering the walls through the main gate, we first took a walk around the garden that surrounds the impressive stone walls.

Being a Monday morning, there weren't many people in the gardens around the castle, just a few elderly people who were either walking around like us or doing their exercises.

We also spotted a couple of homeless people napping along the walls of the castle, enjoying the morning sun.

Japanese people tend to ignore the homeless and give them space. Homeless people in Japan are rarely harassed by the police (or anyone else). They are remarkably polite and quiet, and they never ask for money. Many live in makeshift tent communities by rivers or in parks, and they are known to care for stray animals in urban parks.

Having walked the entire perimeter of the walls, we entered through the main gate into a plum grove in full bloom. While Masao was buying some tea from the vending machines, I walked straight into the grove, trying to take a few pictures of the castle through the branches of the trees covered with beautiful flowers, until a security guard approached me and politely explained that I wasn't supposed to walk into the grove.

From there we crossed the second moat and entered the main area of the castle through the Second Front Gate. Many of the gates of Nagoya Castle have a square layout, and the stone walls include several huge stones to demonstrate the castle's defenses. Here Masao is showing the size of some of these stones.

One of the main architects who designed and directed the building of Nagoya Castle was Nakai Masakiyo. He gathered and refined the existing castle and fortification building techniques and ultimately formulated the standards for the Tokugawa Shogunate's castles, as exemplified by Nagoya Castle. In August 1610 the stone foundation of the main donjon was completed, and by December the stone walls were almost finished.

The bombing of Nagoya by the United States Army Air Forces during the air raids on Japan brought the greatest destruction in the castle's entire history. On May 14, 1945, the main donjon, the small donjon, the golden dolphins, the Hommaru Palace, the northeast turret and other buildings were completely destroyed.

In 1957, the reconstruction of the castle donjons began. Second-generation golden dolphins were cast at the Osaka Mint and transported to the castle. On October 3, 1959, the reconstruction of the two donjons (in the picture above) was completed, and the buildings were opened to the public.

A couple of pictures taken from the top floor of the main donjon. In the view above you can see the small triangular plum grove and the main gate (through the trees). In the view below, you can see the area where the Hommaru Palace used to be. Further in the distance are the Ninomaru gardens, with the tea house where we headed next to enjoy my first cup of green tea with a delicious sweet made with sakura (cherry blossoms).

Nagoya Station is not too far from the castle, so that's where we headed after leaving the beautiful gardens.

By the time we reached the station it was already noon, so we headed back to a sukiyaki restaurant where the rest of the family was waiting for us. Sukiyaki consists of meat (usually thinly sliced beef) slowly cooked or simmered at the table, alongside vegetables and other ingredients, in a shallow iron pot with a mixture of soy sauce, sugar and mirin. Before being eaten, the ingredients are usually dipped in a small bowl of raw, beaten eggs.