Nagoya Day 1

It has been said by many people, but I will say it again, Japan is a completely different country from China. Japan has been in the modern world for well over a hundred years, and everywhere we went today reminded me of a well kept southern city. Sure the cars are smaller and the houses are closer together, but most people are prosperous and the standard of living is clearly much higher than China.

[I have no idea what I hit on the keyboard, so I cannot make the underlining go away!]

Japan is a much "softer" place than China. Sure, China announced its entry into the modern world with the Olympics, but you still feel and see people struggling to survive. China has aggressive street hawkers and poor framers still scratching the earth to survive. Japan probably has a higher standard of living than the U.S., especially at the moment. China has a coarseness to it, while in Japan store clerks bow at me when I buy a bottle of tea. I have already learned not to bow back or they bow again, then I feel the need to bow again and.... You get the picture.

Anyway, our first stop in Nagoya was Nagoya Castle. This was the seat of power of the Tokugawa clan, the samurai family responsible for unifying feudal Japan in 1603. The current castle is a reconstruction of the original since the original one burned down after U.S. bombings in WWII. The castle itself was not necessarily targeted, but Nagoya has always been a manufacturing center, and the medieval castle was destroyed because of its location to important industry.

The top of the castle gives a great view of the city. Nagoya is Japan's fourth largest city, and it is still home to many important industries. Toyota headquarters is just outside of the metro area.

After visiting the castle, we went to the Tokugawa art museum. The old style gate below leads to a very modern museum building. Its collection contains many important scrolls, weapons, and art objects that once belonged to the Tokugawa family. According to the plaque in front of the gate, a descendant of the first Tokugawa shogun gave the collection to the city in the middle of the 20th century.
After the museum, we had even more Japanese culture, a bento box for lunch. Yes, that stuff in the bottom right hand corner is sashimi (raw fish). I had never had this before, but I tried the salmon and tuna. With a little soy sauce and wasabi, it was not too bad. However, I did not try the raw squid; the fried squid I had in Beijing did not agree with me.
After lunch, we toured the Meiji-Mura museum. It is a very unique place. In the mountains just outside of Nagoya, an outside museum has been created by tearing down and reconstructing Meiji period buildings. The Meiji period for Japan was from 1868-1912. This was when Japan modernized and became a world power. The museum features old train stations, post offices, churches, houses, and shops from this period. However, the most remarkable piece of this collection is the entrance to the famous Imperial Hotel,which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I thought that the entire hotel was destroyed by an earthquake in the early twentieth century, but the lobby portion of the building somehow survived. I thought it must have been a replica when I first saw it on the brochure, but it is authentic.

It has also been said that the climate of Japan and Tennessee are very similar. I would have to agree. This Sunday, it felt like a crisp fall day back home. Japan can also look like home. Look at the picture below. If I did not tell you this was taken form a hillside of the Meiji-Mura museum, you would think it was a picture of a Tennessee mountain lake. If I had not been surrounded by Japanese, I would think that I was back home.
Tomorrow we tour Japanese schools all day and then come back to the hotel for a "western-style" dinner, surely this means no raw fish.

Chuck Newell
Nagoya, Japan
10/19/08