1. Toyota Commemorative Museum
2. Lunch: Sapporo Kanihonke
3. Nagoya Castle
4. Supper: Tebasaki
For the last day of our Nagoya Trip, we purchased the one day tourist pass, for the unlimited rides on the sightseeing bus, as well as discounted entrance fees for the sites.
You can obtain more information over: http://www.nagoya-info.jp/en/access/getting_around_nagoya/routebus.html
The bus leaves in interval of minutes (please see the site for the exact information, i can't recall) and you really have to plan your route well. If you take from first stop back to first stop, it's gonna be an hour plus ride. So you might want to look deeper into the bus stop locations, and plan to walk to cover certain places, and then walk to another stop to hop on the bus, i.e. bus stop 2 and bus stop 8 might be just few streets away, but if you take from bus stop 2 to 8, it might probably takes you 40 minutes.
We did not really maximise the pass itself as we under-estimated the beauty and attractions of Toyota Commemorative Museum. Inside this museum, it shows Toyoda to Toyota and how everything about Toyota that you know today came about. Toyoda started from cloth weaving business if you do not know, and this museum brings you through time, from 1G to current generation and the future.
The museum is probably the best museum that we went to, they have guides to bring you through the exhibits, and the exhibits are 'live', i.e. upon pressing of a button, the exhibits will start to demonstrate you to certain tasks. It is really very attractive and we spent half a day just solely here. That's why we were saying that we did not maximise the one day pass as we did not had time to go other places already! Ok stories aside for now, enjoy the photos!
Also in this museum, it has a comprehensive collections of exhibits to show you how each part of the car works, i.e. gear, axes, steering etc etc. At the click on the button at each of the exhibits, it shows the movement of these parts, and there is a section that combined all parts together, showing the mechanisms in how a car moves. It's really pretty amazing. I can totally trust Toyota cars now!
We took the sightseeing bus back to our original stop, and then we walked through Nagoya station to Sapporo Kanihonke which is located just about 5 minutes away from the station. We were told about the big statue of Nana-Chan and we did not see it for the past 2 days in Nagoya. During our walk to the shop, we finally saw her, caught her abit off-guard, she was just going for shower. Ok, don't disturb her already.
We ordered two sets of lunch menu, one snow crab set and one of the "steamboat" set. We also ordered tempura snow crab leg for morris and he really really loved it. He ate two sets of it. The snow crabs were really fresh and tasted awesome. We did not regret making our way back here to eat this. The bill summed up to around $200SGD. It was expensive, but it was really great as well. No regrets.
After lunch, it was already 3pm plus. We walked back to the first stop of the sightseeing bus and hopped on to Nagoya Castle. When we reached there, it was already early 4pm. We made our way to the castle and then alas, the last entry into the castle was already over! What it means, we missed the key landscape of Nagoya! We could only walked at the perimeters of the castle, hoping to steal a glimpse of the castle but we could see nothing. In the end, we took the photo of the signboard and a nice portray on the floor, and ticked this off our itinerary!
Back at hotel, we made BabyTan slept first, while we packed our luggage, ready for tomorrow journey back to Singapore. MamaTan told PapaTan that she really missed the taste of Tebasaki Chicken Wings of Yamachan (Famous outlet for chillac as you enjoy the wings, beers and your cigarettes), but it was already 11pm. Yamachan closes at 1130pm. PapaTan decided to try his luck and left the hotel, towards Yamachan. When he reached there, it was 1128pm, and the shop was closed already. Not wanting to disappoint MamaTan, he walked around the district, scanning through the night spots that we saw in the past 2 days. Most of the night spots sell the wings, but either they are very expensive, or they have just nice closed, or they just don't allow take-aways. In the end, PapaTan went into one of the shops and bought 8 pieces of wings at nearly $15 (Yamachan was selling maybe 10 wings for $8). PapaTan reached back hotel around 1230am, and satisfied our cravings of the wings!