DAY 4: Hakodate to Nagoya (29th March 2023)

I’m so glad we visited Hakodate and after a 15,000-step day on Tuesday, I was very much looking forward to a day mostly spent sitting comfortably in a Bullet Train!

Our next stop was Nagoya, a large city (approximately the same size as Brisbane) about 430km south-west of Tokyo. Yesterday morning we visited the JR station ticket office and booked seats for all our planned Shinkansen trips, including today’s two: Hakodate to Tokyo, then Tokyo to Nagoya. The return trip to Tokyo was simple enough, and the early 5:30am alarm was made easier by the sun already being up. We started by catching the local rail from Hakodate to Shin-Hakodate Hokutu, where we boarded the Shinkansen. To start with we were the only people in our carriage, but as we headed further south many more joined, including an additional two carriages added at Sendai. The logistics of the trains here are mind blowing with everything running to precision in an orderly and calm fashion!

The saying “Enjoy the journey as much as the destination” seems appropriate today. We sat back on our first leg and enjoyed reading, blogging, quite conversations (how lovely is the quietness of trains here!) and the occasional snack on a few things we had bought in Hakodate supermarkets. The change of Shinkansen in Tokyo was equally straightforward, and thankfully the 25-minute gap between trains meant I could buy some sushi from one of the many platform kiosks. The trip from Tokyo to Nagoya was about two hours, and we flipped from book reading to gazing out the window to fill in the time.

What I did notice as we travelled further south were the cherry trees – to start with, many of them now budding with small blossoms, but as we got closer to Nagoya, they were in full bloom, with the gorgeous pale pink flowers punctuating the view as we zipped by at 250km/hr! How great to be in Japan in Sakura season 🙂

Finding the hotel and checking in was as simple as our other tasks today, and we were soon dropping our bags in our tiny, quite old-fashioned, but neat and clean hotel room and heading for the Toyota Automobile Museum, the main reason for our stop in Nagoya. Dave had researched ‘James Bond’ things in Japan and among them was the Toyota 2000GT, which featured in ‘You Only Live Twice’. One of two convertible models in the world, specifically built for the movie was housed in this museum.

As it was already after 2pm, and last entry to the museum was at 4:30pm, we decided catching a taxi the 20km trip was probably the safest bet. We easily found a taxi and the very lovely, well dressed elderly taxi driver was very keen to make sure that we understood it was a long way and it would be cheaper for us to catch public transport. We managed to explain that we needed to be there quickly, and he managed to explain to us that it would be about 10,000 yen (A$115) and were we sure it was open, all with a mix of English, Japanese and the odd picture or map from my phone!

Thirty minutes later and we were at the counter in the museum paying for our entry. 750 Yen for Dave (as he’s old) and 1200 Yen for me (as I am not). Sadly, the very polite young receptionist told us that the James Bond car was no longer on display, but we forged on regardless and the activity did live up to its brochure’s promise of “Even people who don’t like car museums will enjoy this”.

The dozens of cars were immaculately presented over two buildings and three floors and included many non-Japanese cars from the 1890’s onwards. I’ve been to a few car museums in my time – but none presented this well!

After using one of the 25 trillion vending machines in Japan to get a drink (maybe an exaggeration but wow there are soooo many!) we walked to the local railway station and, with the help of a schoolboy who was waiting behind us, got our tickets for the train back into Nagoya. It required us navigating two changes and we were pretty pleased with ourselves that we got back into Nagoya without any hassles.

As you know, I am trying to provide balance to our days and so agreed that Dave could choose our dinner venue. In typical Sara style I did do a bit of research to assist (influence) him 😉 and suggested steak given that we were close to Kobe, famous for its beef. Things went downhill from there. He spotted an ‘Outback Steakhouse’ online, a chain of restaurants whose theme is the Australian Outback. Somehow this obsessive foodie was eating Australian food in Japan! I just gave him one job 😉 😉

I started with a Mojito to calm the situation… but actually did quite enjoy my steak with prawns and Dave said his hamburger was one of the best he’d had (and he’s had a few!).

We had alighted a few stations before the one closest to our hotel, so we could go straight to dinner, and so decided to walk the three or four km back to the hotel afterwards. Nagoya is very pretty at night. In typical Japanese fashion the buildings are lit up with neon billboards and flashing lights, and the highlight of the walk was seeing many cherry trees in full blossom under lights. Magical!