A Walk in The Park

Friday we took advantage of a day off to go visit Nagoya Castle and Sakae, the city's buzzing shopping and nightlife district.

Noora and I took the subway at the nearby Tsurumai park to the western edge of the city centre, JR Nagoya station, which is a small city in itself packed with department stores, hotels and skyscrapers. Although the morning rush hour was over, the atmosphere was quite hectic compared to the surroundings of the university.

Nothing is impossible in Japan, like this ferris wheel accessed from the department store.

We decided to go by foot all the way to Nagoya Castle and have a better look at the city. As soon as we left the immediate vicinity of the station, the mood suddenly calmed down and one or two blocks away from the station you could barely notice you had just left the main station of Japan's fourth largest city. And this applies to most of the busy, heavily trafficked roads too. As soon as you take a turn between the big company buildings bordering the main streets, calmer, sometimes even eerily quiet small streets unfold.

Wandering through the streets and gazing around us, we arrived in no time to the moated Nagoya Castle sitting pretentiously in the middle of the park. The castle was reduced to ashes in World War II bombardments but has since been reconstructed. The exterior resembles faithfully the old castle, but the interior is made of concrete and holds a museum with paintings and a few samurai armors and swords. 

Nagoya castle

On Saturday the laboratory held a BBQ party at Shounai Ryokuchi park to welcome the new members and bid farewell to those who were leaving. We arrived around noon and after a short speech and a little organizing the grills were ablaze. A Japanese BBQ party is very similar to a Finnish one: there's meat (including sausages), beer, chatting and ball games (yes, yes). The mood was very cheerful and relaxed from the beginning and there was an overall sense of fellowship. The day culminated in a drinking game and to my astonishment even the professors partook. And no one was spared. All in all I was very happy with the BBQ party. I got to know most of the laboratory staff before starting to work on Monday and I was able to slip some Japanese here and there in the conversations.