Winter Trip Day 1 of 5: Taking Local and Rapid Trains to Nagoya on Christmas Eve

JR Nagoya Station:






Nagoya Castle:







More pictures.

Yesterday I bought the Seishun 18 Kippu for 11,500 yen that allows 5 non-consecutive days of travel on local (普通) and rapid trains (快速, i.e. can’t use for Shinkansen (新幹線and Limited Express (特急). It took around 6 hours by local and rapid train to get to Nagoya. I left the dormitory at 6:30am, arrived at Tokyo station at around 7:20am and took a local train to my first transfer. Going there took 3 transfers of trains. For reference, Shinkansen to Nagoya from Tokyo takes 1hr 40 min, and costs around 11,000 yen one way. Basically my route was:

Dormitory =20 min walk=> Tabata (田端) =14 min=> Tokyo (東京) =116 min=> Atami (熱海) =146 min=> Hamamatsu (浜松) =35 min=> Toyohashi (豊橋) =46 min=> Nagoya (名古屋)

The train from Tokyo to Atami was pretty good, not very crowded and had row airplane style seating and there was even a washroom on the train. After this part, things got uncomfortable. From Atami to Hamamatsu, the train was a old train with airplane style seats facing each other so there is not much room. Plus even though the train runs through a bunch of small towns, the train was very packed, not comfortable when you are carrying luggage with you. Things for worse from the trip from Toyohashi to Nagoya, during this part, there was so many commuters heading to Nagoya, it was like a rush hour train in Tokyo, so I had to stand the entire way, 46 mins, with the entire train packed so you can’t even move.

I arrived at Nagoya at around 2pm, checked in to the hotel and walked around. In Nagoya, the roads are wide and there are lots of cars and not many people on the streets, but that’s because I think Nagoya has the most underground streets or shopping malls in Japan, connecting all the subway and train stations. I walked to Nagoya Castle after I checked in. Nagoya Castle was rebuilt in 1959 after being destroyed and while it looks original from the outside, it looked as fake as Osaka Castle from the inside. There is an elevator inside and displays of artifacts. From the top, there was a nice view of Nagoya. After that I walked to Nagoya’s downtown district called Sakae. This is where all the large department stores and expensive shops are located. The streets where very wide and there was a park running down the middle of the streets, very different from the crowded and dirty streets of Tokyo. Also all the buildings where also connected to each other via an underground shopping mall. The subway was integrated into the mall, so you didn’t even have to go up or down, it was on the same level as the underground mall.