June 2nd - Nagoya Castle

Today we explored Nagoya Castle. A few more of the teachers arrived and they came with us on our adventure to the castle.

We left late in the morning and took the subway from Hongo (our suburb) into Nagoya and from there found our way to the castle.

We had a little fun taking photos outside of the Castle

Nagoya Castle was constructed under the orders of Tokugawa Ieyasu as a fortress within central Japan and to protect from attacks from the direction of Osaka. The castle was completed in 1612 and flourished until the Meiji Restoration.

In May of 1945 in the midst of WWII air raids on Japan most of the buildings of the castle were burnt down. However three corner towers, three gates and most of the paintings of the sliding doors survived the fire.

The castle now serves as a museum showcasing the buildings along with different artefacts that survived the fire and also detailing the history of the castle.

You can also try and pull the weight of a stone that makes up the base of the castle. I was pretty good I would be able to pull 40kg of stone by myself.

Or take a photo on the replica of the gold dolphins that adorn the two corners on the roof of the castle.

They also have a show that has Tokugawa Ieyasu describing why he needed and wanted to build the castle. I could understand what was being said, but someone was kind enough to give us the main point of the show.

 

Day One - June 1st

I arrived in Nagoya late the night before, my flight was delayed by an hour, so I wasn’t really able to explore the small suburb of the city when I arrived.

I was shown to my residence – which I will only stay in until the 4^th because then I move to Osaka to finish my training.

This is the small room that I was given for the first few days of my stay in Nagoya.

After I settled in I met up with two of the other teachers who are doing there training here in Nagoya. We wandered around a little and explored the area.

Not much really happened as we were all still fighting jet lag and so we saved our adventure for the next day.