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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 \u2014 Esca Shopping Mall \u2014 to the two hotels I stayed at in Nagoya was relatively congestion-free, and on 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.<\/p>\n
Nagoya is certainly a great springboard for several day trips, though they invariably all involve traveling out of Aichi Prefecture \u2014 where Nagoya is located \u2014 and in a north-easterly direction to Gifu and also Nagano Prefecture, with its dramatic mountain scenery. The three I did \u2014 Eihoji Temple\/Ena Valley\/Magome\/Tsumago, Kamikochi, and Gujo Hachiman\/Takayama\/Shirakawa-go \u2014 all went according to itinerary and offered varied things to see, though the fact that all involved at least a few to several hours’ drive out of Nagoya meant that the 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, the per-person tour prices are lower, and the many tour operators offering these trips make for competitive pricing.<\/p>\n
The warm weather though made things less pleasant: the warmest month in the country seems to be 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 to the area I was in, with rainfall hitting Nagoya from noon onwards.<\/p>\n This has been my eighth trip to Japan now. There are still two areas in Japan that I really want to visit though: the central and southern parts 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/blog-weather-nagoya.png\")