Winter Trip Day 2 of 5: Christmas in Inuyama….

Inuyama Castle:












Meiji Mura:



Imperial Hotel:



More pictures

Yesterday I bought combined discount tickets to Inuyama (犬山) that included admission ticket to the Meiji Mura open air museum for about 2100 yen. This was a deal because the admission ticket to the museum would have cost 1600 yen and one way train fares would cost 850 yen. I bought this ticket from Meitetsu (名鉄) train office, it was not advertised anywhere and I only knew that this ticket existed after planning on the Internet for going to Inuyama. I had to use by very basic Japanese skills to ask the guy for the ticket. Meitetsu is a privated railway company only located in the Nagoya area.

Why would I go to Inuyama? Because it has the oldest castle in Japan and there is an interesting open air museum with buildings and information from the Meiji period of Japan (initial period of modernization in Japan).

It took 30 mins by Meitetsu train to get to Inuyama. I got there at about 9am, and walked to the castle site. While I was walking to the castle site, I passed by many traditional Japanese neighbourhoods that you rarely see in any big cities any more, and the snow made the scenery very nice.

When I arrived at Inuyama Castle (犬山城), I was maybe the 4th or 5th tourist there, it was so nice going to a tourist attraction that was not crowded with people. This was a real castle, with steep stairs for ascending. You had to take off your shoes can carry them in a bag that they provide you. On the top floor of the 4 story castle, I saw a great view of Inuyama and the surrounding areas. Because the castle was built on a hill, it made the castle seem much higher.

Next I went to the Meiji Mura (明治村) museum. This was an interesting “museum” because it was laid out like a theme park. All the buildings here once where located in cities. But after they got demolished for the sake of modernization, they got rebuilt in this museum. It seemed from the information from each building that most of the buildings were demolished during the 1960s. There were many great buildings there such as many old style churches in the museum. I guess that is why today’s Japanese cities look like faceless cities with no character but full of buildings with bathroom tile walls. Also interesting in the museum was the partial reconstruction of the Imperial Hotel of Tokyo, a famous hotel designed by the famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright that was pulled down also during the 60s to make way for a “modern high rise building”.

Also at the Catholic Church building, because it was Christmas day, the museum organized a concert with an orchestra playing. I could not stay for the whole concert because there was no heat inside the church building and it was freezing cold.

Also I had a rip off lunch at the restaurant there, a winter special “Beef Bowl” cost 1000 yen, and basically included only a plate of rice with slice of beef and some yellow strips which I don’t know what it was and a cup of consommé soup.

Note: Bread in Japan is VERY tasty and expensive. There was a bakery in the underground mall connected to Nagoya station called Cascade that sold a bun with egg inside. It doesn’t sound tasty until you actually tried it. Most breads costs 100 yen and up for a single item. Also when I went to Kyoto, I had the best Melon Bread EVER! The top had the green melon “icing” and inside the bread was the orange melon “icing”, just like a real melon!