Wandering around Nagoya
I got into one of my more solitary moods and ditched fellow students on Friday afternoon and went on extended walk around Nagoya on my own. Ate boxed lunch on train, and then headed out to the excessively warm (27 degrees according to forecast) midday sun.
I was looking for the local oddity-shop called Geestore, but the plan unfortunately did not quite work out as I had planned. First of all, I forgot to take the map along when I left Okazaki. This I circumvented by finding random unprotected wlan and getting the map from their website (I've claimed that you do not need to walk more than 100 meters to find network connectivity in any big japanese city - assertion which I proved wrong later this day).
After walking about kilometer or so in the blistering sun, I found the store. Or what I thought was the store. The logo was there. But very little else was, besides kanji-infested sign which basically said "we have moved - our new address is 名古屋市中区大須３－１１－３４" (except all in japanese obviously).
I did not appreciate this very much, but as Osu was close by (less than 3km), I decided to walk there. The Osu area is few square kilometers across, so I needed to decrypt the 3-11-34 part. Mapion is excellent just for that. However, to use it I needed network connectivity again.
The place where I found the last wlan access was half a kilometer away (the wrong way) so I figured I might as well head for Osu and find another wlan point. Unfortunately, this was not as simple as I hoped and in the end my arm got very tired from holding the laptop, and my previous record (100 meters to find wlan access) was beat handily. I think I walked almost kilometer before I found unsecure wlan and checked the address on the map in Mapion.
After almost hour of wandering around (Osu has interesting museums, I checked from outside what special exhibitions they had - unfortunately nothing noteworthy) and checking out Osu Kannon (the most famous buddhist temple in the district), I headed to shopping area.
And damn, the shopping zone in Osu is a lot more impressive than Sakae or other parts of Nagoya I have been to so far. I found the Geestore, which was disappointing as far as what I was looking for (gatchapon, cheap "random result" toys you get), but had tons of other interesting stuff. As usual, I window shopped hour or two, went to few other stores, and finally walked to nearby Book-Off where I found few more books of 吸血鬼美夕 - bought 2 more for 210 yen (1.7? euros for 2 secondhand a5+ size books, not bad). Finally wandered home after doing some photography of random things nearby (results posted later on if I get inspired).
Summary of Book-Off visits so far:
And finally rant about Japanese toys.. who in their right mind would pay 5+ euros for random figurine out of 7 possible, when you want only one? Apparently many Japanese, or they want them all, as almost all fan stuff seems to be of 'random one out of N alternatives'. Gatchapon (kinder-egg-like-but-larger-and-no-chocolate) are reasonably priced (100-300 yen), but there are also figurines that are in 700+ yen range with similar selling scheme. And I really wanted the 'rare' Chii-with-bad-hair-day too *sigh*. Oh well, American anime-fanboy left me a bunch of his loot that he didn't want to carry home, beyond that haven't shopped much beyond books myself. Maybe I will indulge myself when I go to Tokyo in two weeks or so. My sole toy so far is gatchapon - luckily out of 6 Evangelion figurines I got the one I wanted.
I was looking for the local oddity-shop called Geestore, but the plan unfortunately did not quite work out as I had planned. First of all, I forgot to take the map along when I left Okazaki. This I circumvented by finding random unprotected wlan and getting the map from their website (I've claimed that you do not need to walk more than 100 meters to find network connectivity in any big japanese city - assertion which I proved wrong later this day).
After walking about kilometer or so in the blistering sun, I found the store. Or what I thought was the store. The logo was there. But very little else was, besides kanji-infested sign which basically said "we have moved - our new address is 名古屋市中区大須３－１１－３４" (except all in japanese obviously).
I did not appreciate this very much, but as Osu was close by (less than 3km), I decided to walk there. The Osu area is few square kilometers across, so I needed to decrypt the 3-11-34 part. Mapion is excellent just for that. However, to use it I needed network connectivity again.
The place where I found the last wlan access was half a kilometer away (the wrong way) so I figured I might as well head for Osu and find another wlan point. Unfortunately, this was not as simple as I hoped and in the end my arm got very tired from holding the laptop, and my previous record (100 meters to find wlan access) was beat handily. I think I walked almost kilometer before I found unsecure wlan and checked the address on the map in Mapion.
After almost hour of wandering around (Osu has interesting museums, I checked from outside what special exhibitions they had - unfortunately nothing noteworthy) and checking out Osu Kannon (the most famous buddhist temple in the district), I headed to shopping area.
And damn, the shopping zone in Osu is a lot more impressive than Sakae or other parts of Nagoya I have been to so far. I found the Geestore, which was disappointing as far as what I was looking for (gatchapon, cheap "random result" toys you get), but had tons of other interesting stuff. As usual, I window shopped hour or two, went to few other stores, and finally walked to nearby Book-Off where I found few more books of 吸血鬼美夕 - bought 2 more for 210 yen (1.7? euros for 2 secondhand a5+ size books, not bad). Finally wandered home after doing some photography of random things nearby (results posted later on if I get inspired).
Summary of Book-Off visits so far:
- Okazaki middle (north of Aeon building): maybe 10 times
- Okazaki south: maybe 6 times
- Okazaki north (far away, 7km or so, by train)
- Atsuda (BIG - southern Nagoya)
- Kurogawa (BIG - northern Nagoya)
- Osu (central Nagoya): 2 times
And finally rant about Japanese toys.. who in their right mind would pay 5+ euros for random figurine out of 7 possible, when you want only one? Apparently many Japanese, or they want them all, as almost all fan stuff seems to be of 'random one out of N alternatives'. Gatchapon (kinder-egg-like-but-larger-and-no-chocolate) are reasonably priced (100-300 yen), but there are also figurines that are in 700+ yen range with similar selling scheme. And I really wanted the 'rare' Chii-with-bad-hair-day too *sigh*. Oh well, American anime-fanboy left me a bunch of his loot that he didn't want to carry home, beyond that haven't shopped much beyond books myself. Maybe I will indulge myself when I go to Tokyo in two weeks or so. My sole toy so far is gatchapon - luckily out of 6 Evangelion figurines I got the one I wanted.
posted by Wanderer at 17:15
<< Home