Trip to Nagoya

On Sunday, Ayako and I took a trip to Nagoya. As you may or may not remember, I took a short trip there last April, as seen here. Nagoya is about 90 minutes by train to the west of Hamamatsu. This time, I started off by taking a walk around Nagoya castle, which I missed last time.
It seemed almost more like a museum inside than a castle, but had lots of interesting information. On the top of the castle, there are two golden tiger-headed fish. They have actually been melted down twice previously and been reconstructed with less purity of gold when there were some financial troubles in the past. There is a replica in front of the castle:Outside the castle, I was surprised by two things. First, to see plum blossoms on the ume plum trees:They have bloomed much earlier than normal. I saw on the news today that it is the latest that there has never been a snow fall in Tokyo this year.

The second thing to surprise me was that instead of seeing water in the moat area around the castle, there was grass and a few deer down there:I guess the have a peaceful place to live and makes it like a mini zoo for the visitors.

After walking around the castle and then a walk to the downtown area, we were pretty hungry. We found a good deal for an all-you-can-eat tempura restaurant. Tempura is deep-frying vegetables, fish or meat. It was very yummy and fun to do and filled us up as well.

After that we did some shopping, which left me very tired. It was a nice trip, but I don't think I need to go back there for awhile, since I didn't even buy anything this time.