Winter trip to Nagoya

Little World Open Space Museum and Ainu House of Hokkaido, Japan


German edifice and Indian building style


Nagoya City and Nagoya Castle

Nagoya Aquarium - Dolphin show and The Waving Whale

Since past two weeks a series of outings also kept me busy along with my research work. The first outing was on 20th and 21st of last month. It was winter trip to Nagoya organized by University of Fukui. The university trips appear to come so frequently these days as I fondly remember the last year's summer trip to Toyama and Nagano just happened in the immediate past. Originally I had not planned to attend this year's trip in spite of repeated requests from F.da-san, since Nagoya is a nearby city and can be visited anytime and partly also to save my chance of being selected for better ones in future. Finally just 3 days before, I changed my intention to go and have some fun. In the ensuing two days I had many memorable moments while exploring different places along with friends. To give a brief description of the trip- The first place visited was called “Little World”. Spread in a huge area of land was a man-made miniature representation of traditional housing patterns of various countries such as Peru, Germany, Indonesia, Thailand, Middle East nations, South Africa, and of course mine, India. The ancient housing architecture of different countries enthralled me so much so that I wondered how human minds were still naïve in those days. Nevertheless, some of them were modern too. However, I found Indian version was too modern to be called it as style of ancient kerala. To my surprise, I heard kannada song being played in the Indian restaurant over there.
The next place visited was Meiji-mura (Meiji village). It was a symbolic of buildings and lifestyles during Meiji period (~17th century). In the evening we went to Nagoya city proper and stayed at a dorm near the Nagoya rail station. After a refreshing bath in hot spring (onsen), we had traditional Japanese meals with sake and karaoke.
The next day we visited popular Nagoya Castle followed by Tokugawa art museum in the morning. The afternoon was spent in the famous Nagoya aquarium. Right at the entrance one can see dolphins sailing in huge water chambers. Later, it was a spectacle of sorts to see dolphins and whales performing high jumps, rolling and swaying rhythmically in concert with each other. Later, it was amazing to see a varied number of aquatic fauna and flora. The final moment of the day came when I saw a large group of penguins in a wide enclosure with artificial snow fall.