Shirotori Garden and Sights Before That – Joel’s Journeys & Jaunts

After I finished with the Nagoya Aquarium and the Fuji Antarctica Museum in the morning, and hunted and gathered some lunch at a nearby food court, I visited the other two sights in the clustered quartet of attractions that were included in the combination ticket I bought. Those were the Nagoya Port Building Observation Lounge and the Nagoya Maritime Museum. I didn’t spend long at either of them.

Then it was on to the Atsuta Shrine. And I finished the afternoon at Shirotori Garden.

By the way, when I was creating this morning’s entry, I was having some technical issues with exporting photos. It was an Apple Photos problem, not a blog problem. It took me a long time to find the fix. As a result, it’s now late, and I’m going to rush through this post. Consequently, it will probably be shorter than the subjects deserve and even more filled with typos than usual.

Nagoya Port Building Observation Lounge

“Observation Lounge” makes this sound like it’s posher than it is. It’s an observation deck with some lounge chairs in it. There is no food or beverages.

The lounge is on the seventh floor of the Nagoya Port Building, but it’s considerably higher than seven normal stories. Considerably higher. It’s a weird building. Some very tall empty spaces (take a look at the photo of the building here) probably don’t get counted as floors.

The lounge has floor-to-ceiling windows all around it, so you can get a 360-degree view of the harbour and, in the other direction, downtown Nagoya quite a ways into the distance. Even farther in the distance, on three sides (the fourth side is the sea), there are mountains.

Another thing the observation deck provides a good view of—far better than the picture I took of it from on the ground and posted in this morning’s entry—is of the Nagoya Aquarium. It’s a curvaceous building.

Nagoya Maritime Museum

The Nagoya Maritime Museum is in the Nagoya Port Building, the same building as the observation lounge. So I needed only an elevator ride—from the seventh to the third floor—to get from one to the other.

The museum is a small one on two floors. It mostly talks about the Nagoya port and the goods it handles. Most, but not all, of the information panels display both Japanese and English. They provide information about Nagoya’s port, its operations, and the goods it handles.

There are some small models of old ships, a model of a container handling area, model ships in bottles, and gifts the port received from other ports it formed sister port associations with. In the area with the ships in bottles, some people were sitting at a table working on more boats in bottles.

Some interesting facts I learned about Nagoya harbour:

• The Port of Nagoya is about one-third of the area of Nagoya City.
• It’s the largest port in Japan, larger than the ports of Tokyo and Yokohama combined.
• An average of about 90 cargo ships a day, 30,000 per year, make port calls at the Port of Nagoya.

So, the harbour is a big deal in Nagoya.

Atsuta Shrine

The Atsuta Shrine is set in a lovely, large forest. My walking tour app rates it as a “must-see.” The app (GPSmyCity) says that it “is one of the most revered Shinto shrines in the country. Traditionally believed to have been established during the reign of Emperor Keikō (71-130).”

There are several buildings in the forested compound. I didn’t find any of them to be spectacular, but all were attractive. Near the front of the shrine complex, there’s a pond with koi in front of an outdoor food court with three or four vendors. The pond is quite lovely.

None of the informational signs or directional signs in the compound has a word of English on them. No, I take that back. There was English when they wanted to tell me not to do something. For example, there was a sign telling me not to take pictures beyond the steps. Another said only, “No photos.” Another no photos sign had the word please in it. That was pretty much the extent of the English, except…

The shrine has a small museum. On an overhang in front of the museum building, there is, in permanent, metal letters, the word: “Museum.” Inside, on a more ad hoc sign on paper, was the word “Tickets” and an arrow. There was no more English that I saw in the museum.

When I bought my ticket to the museum, the ticket seller handed me a one-page leaflet with, based on the pictures I quickly glanced at, information about the contents of the museum. As she handed it to me, she had an apologetic look on her face and said, “Only Japanese.” I didn’t take the leaflet. Save the trees!

The museum has a large painting, an illustrated scroll, some illustrated banners, and a lot of swords. There were probably other artifacts that I forgot. I’d have a better shot at remembering them if they allowed photographs in the museum. They didn’t.

Oh, saying I would have done a better job of remembering if I was allowed to take pictures reminded me of something outside that I took a picture of. There was a sign plunked in the middle of a walkway into a handsome building in the compound that I think is used for functions of some sort, maybe weddings, I don’t know. The sign did have some English on it in addition to the Japanese.

I doubt that the English was a great translation of the Japanese. It said simply, “It’s not free here.” Oh, my goodness. That sounds like a plea for help, doesn’t it? Don’t enter! If you do, you’ll be held captive like we are!

The shrine was very crowded today, a Saturday. I don’t think many of the visitors were Western tourists. Mine would have been one of only a very few Caucasian faces I saw at the shrine if I had a mirror or used my selfie camera. (I hadn’t and didn’t.)

That brings up a point. I don’t think Nagoya is particularly popular with Western tourists. I’ve seen very few people who are obviously Caucasian in the city. Of course, people with Asian features can be born in or immigrate to the Americas or Europe and come to visit the land of their ancestors. But still, I’d expect to see more Caucasians if it were popular with Western tourists.

And while most of the restaurants here can accommodate Anglophones, it’s not always easy.

All that aside, the Atsuta Shrine is worth a visit, if only for the setting.

Shirotori Garden

After the Atsuta Shrine, it was over to Shirotori Garden, which was a walk of only about 15 minutes.

Shiroti Garden is a little less refined than what I’ve come to expect from Japanese gardens.

A large, serpentine pond snakes through the centre of the grounds. It has a few koi swimming in it. At various points, stepping stones cross narrow portions of the pond, and quaint bridges cross some wider spans.

In addition to the pond, some streams gurgle over rocks.

There are a lot of trees at Shirotori Garden, some of them wearing their fall colours when I was there. And, yes, I know they’re a type of grass, not trees, but there is also a small bamboo forest there.

The garden has a mound at one end, with some rock features. A small, attractive waterfall tumbles over one of them.

Shirotori Garden has a traditional teahouse. Several people were inside having traditional matcha tea and a confection when I was there. I didn’t go in because it was getting late and there wasn’t much time until the gardens closed.

In one area of the pond that I mentioned above, lanterns were strung in rows across it, with the lanterns seeming to float on the water. The lanterns were electric, not candles. I know this because just before I left Shirotori Garden, the sun was getting low and the lanterns came on, all at once, without anyone lighting them. It was pretty.

I have only one full day left in Nagoya. Come back to find out how I spend it. I have an idea, but I haven’t decided.

More pictures from Shirotori Garden: