I’m writing this onboard the flight back home from Nagoya to Singapore, SQ671. The flight took off at 10:42AM, and should be arriving home slightly earlier at 3:45PM than the scheduled arrival time of 4PM Singapore time, with a just under 6 hour flight time. The flight wasn’t full – perhaps three quarters filled from a casual check – and I suspect that the September school holidays ended yesterday and kids are mostly back in school starting today has something to do with it! The seat next to me is empty i.e. I can stretch myself a little easier, and have plenty of arm room to check and improve the dozen or so blog entries I’ve put up this week, and also write this reflection post.
As time goes on and whenever I travel, I find re-reading these reflection posts a real pleasure. It reminds me of what I saw, felt and mused about in the various places I’ve visited, and how much I’ve changed as an adult: from when I was in my early 30s – about when I started seriously writing this blog – to my approaching mid-50s now, with all the bundled aging problems to boot. For example, the stamina I used to have doing inclines uphill, or clocking in 25,000 steps without breaking too much of a sweat… those days are now long gone past. A case in point: at yesterday’s day trip, I made my way up to the Shiroyama Observation platform for that magnificent view of Shirakawa-Go: and I don’t remember that 10 minute walk uphill to be nearly so strenuous! Sure, it was winter 3 years ago and about 28 degreeC yesterday, but still.
That aside, there are a couple of Japanese cities I’ve really liked from my visits to Japan. Kanazawa still sits on top of that list, followed by Fukuoka, and Nagoya is a solid third. This isn’t to say that I don’t like Kyoto or Tokyo, but those two cities these days are either extremely crowded and/or the train network can drive me bonkers! Nagoya is a good balance: it’s not nearly as chaotic as Tokyo, and the room rates of hotels near the train station aren’t the crazy expensive rates of Kyoto. Of the malls around Nagoya, the nearest one – Ecsa Shopping Mall – to the two hotels I stayed at in Nagoya was relatively congestion free, and the few occasions when it was, I could cross over to the east side of the station to Unimall, where we stayed nearby during our 2022 trip.
Nagoya is certainly a great springboard for several day trips, though they invariably all involved traveling out of Aichi prefecture – where Nagoya is located – and in a north-easterly direction to Gifu, and also Nagono prefectures, with its dramatic mountains scenery. The three I did – Eihoji Temple/Ena Valley/Magome/Tsugomo, Kamikochi, and Gujo Hachiman/Takayama/Shirakawa-Go – all went according to itinerary, and offered varied things to see, though that all involved at least a few to several hours drive out of Nagoya meant that ratio of actual sightseeing time to just trying to get there and back is a little lopsided! Still, what I particularly appreciated was that all three day trips were quite affordable, and each ranged between SGD44 to SGD65. I assume that the fact that these places are largely free of admission fees played a big part in that. Since guests are only paying for the transportation and the accompanying guide to make sure guests are taken care of, meant that the per person tour prices and that there are many tour operators offering these trips made for a competitive pricing.
The warm weather though made things less pleasant: the warmest month in the country seems to be in August, and it remained quite humid in the first half of September. There were even heat wave warnings in the first several days, though on Thursday evening, the Tokyo region saw very heavy rain that led to the suspension of train rides. The rain carried through in the area I was at, with rain fall hitting Nagoya from noon onwards.
This has been my eighth trip to Japan now. There are still two areas in Japan that I still really want to visit though: the central and southern part of Kyushu, and also the Sendai region. For the moment, it looks like those trips would have to be family vacations though: the location for next year’s conference has been announced, and it’s Kisarazu, the city just south of Haneda airport. So, unless I really get adventurous, it looks like I’d probably be visiting the area around Tokyo one year from now.