Higashiyama SkyTower, Noritake Garden – Joel’s Journeys & Jaunts

This afternoon in Nagoya, I started where I left off this morning and went up the Higashiyama SkyTower. I then ended the afternoon by visiting Noritake Gardens, which isn’t much more than a 15-minute walk from my hotel.

I leave Nagoya tomorrow to head back to Tokyo to catch my plane back home to Toronto the following day. Leaving the city means it’s time for a summary of my time in Nagoya. That appears at the end of this post.

Higashiyama SkyTower

If you read my morning post about Higashiyama (Zoo and) Botanical Gardens, you know that I was forced, or rather thought I was forced, to walk through the zoo portion of it against my will. I swore that if there was any way possible, I would not walk through the zoo again to get out of the park.

I expounded at length as to my reasons for not wanting to return through the zoo in my morning post. I won’t repeat them here because I don’t want to relive the horror of the experience. If you didn’t read the morning post and you’re interested, you can read it by clicking here.

I will repeat one thing from that morning post because it’s relevant here. I bought a combination ticket that got me into not only the zoo and botanical gardens, but also the Higashiyama SkyTower, which is in the same park.

When I thought I’d seen all that there was to see in the botanical gardens, I asked Google Maps to plot me a walking route to the Higashiyama SkyTower. I was pleased to see that it gave me a route that avoided the zoo.

Not only that, but walking along the path that it sent me along, I learned that there was more to the botanical gardens that I hadn’t yet seen.

I strolled a wide path through a forest decked out in its fall foliage finest.

This section of the Higashiyama Botanical Gardens was busier than the sections I was in this morning. People were occupying themselves taking pictures of the autumnal colours. (See. I’m not the only one who does that.) Some had what looked like high-end cameras with long lenses. Either that or they were bazookas. But it was probably the camera thing.

But it still wasn’t so crowded as to be a zoo, like, well, the zoo.

Walking along the path, I passed a stream, small ponds, a simple shrine, and other handsome buildings. It was a bit of unexpected calm and beauty.

I walked along it to its end, which put me at a park exit. There was no English signage indicating where the SkyTower was, and the tower wasn’t visible at that point. In fact, there was almost no English signage at all. I didn’t want to go out and find that I needed a re-entry pass to get back into the park to get to the SkyTower.

There was, however, a desk with a big “i” information icon hanging over it. I hoped that if they used the “i” instead of a Japanese character, they spoke English.

I asked the woman at the desk how to get to the SkyTower. She looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. I was from her perspective.

After I repeated SkyTower a few times, I think she understood what I was after. She called over a colleague. The two conversed in Japanese for a bit. One of them said to me, “SkyTower,” and some Japanese words. Then they called over a third colleague. He had a few words of English and said, “I take you.”

I tried to tell him that it wasn’t necessary if he could just tell me how to get there. I don’t think he understood me. I then reached into my pocket to do something I should have done much earlier in the episode, namely, use the conversation mode of either Apple Translate or Google Translate to facilitate the conversation. But before I could open up either app, he insisted a few times in a friendly tone, “I take you.”

I acquiesced. He gave me a re-entry pass so I could get back into the grounds. And off we went.

As soon as the tower loomed up before me, I thanked him profusely and told him I could find my way from there. I don’t know how much of that he understood, but he bowed his head and returned to his entrance gate.

The Higashiyama SkyTower is roughly pencil-shaped with a lot of what looks like, but isn’t, scaffolding on the exterior.

When I got there, a short line of people was waiting outside. There was a sandwich board sign in front with only Japanese text and two numbers. As I arrived, an attendant had just changed the top number to 15 by placing a magnetic “one” and “five” on the sandwich board. The lower number already said “30.”

I used the camera function of Google Translate to learn that there was a 15-minute wait to get to the observation deck and a 30-minute wait to get a seat in the restaurant above it. I just went to the observation deck.

I couldn’t figure out why it would take so long. There weren’t many people in line. When I got inside, I saw why. There was only one, not particularly large elevator to serve both the observation deck and the restaurant. They packed as many people into the elevator as they could without causing any crush injuries, but I still had to wait a while for the elevator.

The view from the top is great. I saw Nagoya stretching out in four directions. The tall buildings of downtown were quite a way away from there, and the mountains were even farther off. There was a little haze that kind of blurred them, but it was still a terrific view.

When I left the tower, there was a zoo entrance right there. I had a re-entry pass to get back in, and that probably was the shortest way by distance (although I don’t know about time because of the need to fight through crowds) to get to the subway I needed. But there was no way I was going to go back through the zoo. I tried to find another route on Google Maps that would avoid the zoo.

I got one and started to head off in that direction, but before I got far, I saw a sign at the top of a set of stairs. The sign had a bunch of Japanese, but also the English word “subway” and an arrow pointing down, which was away from where Google wanted me to go. There is only one subway line with a stop close to Higashiyama. I followed the sign. It got me to the subway stop by probably the shortest route.

More views from Higashiyama SkyTower:

Noritake Garden

Noritake Garden is right downtown. If you think the “Noritake” in “Noritake Garden” refers to the respected Japanese maker of fine china, you’d be right. Noritake Garden is on the former site of Noritake’s manufacturing building. And, in addition to a garden, it has a few things related to Noritake.

There is a Noritake shop where you can buy Noritake products.

A small shrine sits on the grounds of Noritake Garden. The first president of Noritake built his house within the factory premises. The shrine was built in 1940 on the site of that home.

There’s also a four-storey building in the gardens. The first two floors of the building contain the Noritake Craft Centre. The top two floors contain the Noritake Museum.

Photography is strictly forbidden in the craft centre. It houses displays on the steps and techniques in making Noritake china, both tableware and figurines. Because I couldn’t take pictures of the displays, I’ve forgotten most of the details, but I do remember that there are three inspections in Noritake’s quality control process: Visual, tactile, and audible.

The visual element is obvious. They look at every single piece with a magnifying glass and throw out any with the slightest of flaws. In the craft centre, two plates that had been discarded because of flaws were on display. There were also enlarged photographs of the section of each plate where the flaw was, with the flaw circled.

I couldn’t find the flaw with my naked eye. They also provided a magnifying glass beside each plate. I still couldn’t see it. Then I noticed that there was a small section of the magnifying glass that was cut differently from the rest of it. That provided a larger magnification. I could see the tiny speck on one and the short, thin line on the other with that higher magnification.

Tactile inspection is also obvious. They feel each finished piece for any burs or other imperfections.

I didn’t really understand the audible inspection. There were a few video screens around the craft centre, on which I could watch a short video, in the language of my choice, about whatever they were presenting in that area of the centre. At the testing station, they showed the three types of testing. For the audible testing, they tapped gently on a cup (or it might have been a vase, I forget) at the top and then at the bottom and listened for the tone it produced. I don’t know what they were listening for. I imagine a differing pitch indicating inconsistent thickness, but that’s purely a guess on my part.

At a few of the stations, Noritake craftspeople were doing some manual work on some pieces.

On the second floor, in addition to displays about how they transfer and/or paint designs on the pieces, there were some worktables where, I assume for a fee, visitors could paint their own designs onto a blank plate or bowl. I didn’t look into the cost of that because I didn’t want to embarrass the other people there with my superior stick figure drawing.

The Noritake Museum is two floors displaying Noritake plates, teacups and saucers, bowls, vases, and other pieces. The top floor had examples of “Old Noritake,” which is a trademarked name. Old Noritake is porcelain made between the 1880s and 1945.

The top floor also had some information panels in Japanese and English about the history. For example, the company got its current name when it was renamed to the location of its factory, Noritake, which was then close to Nagoya. The municipality has since been merged into Nagoya, and it’s close to the downtown area.

In addition to the buildings, there is the Noritake Garden itself. There are two sections to it. One is relatively plain, with grass and a few trees. This time of year, there are also several Christmas decorations. The other part is precisely sculpted with a lovely fountain at its centre.

There are two long, thin pools in a row in a single line with just a walkway between them. On one long side of each, the edge is lined with large stones. On the other is a sidewalk.

The bushes in this section are very precisely trimmed as if their mother constantly nags them to get a haircut, and they listen to their mother. (Two people who read this will get that. Everyone else, please just move on.)

I’m sure this more refined section of Noritake Garden would be fabulously photogenic if it weren’t so full of people posing for photographs in it as it was today. I had to be patient to get the pictures I got with only a few people in them.

It was a lovely day, and tomorrow it’s time to move on to the closing of this trip, a brief return to Tokyo where it started.

Nagoya Summary

I’ll just say it. I think Nagoya is a so-so town. I’m glad I came. It has some interesting and/or beautiful sights to see, including a great aquarium, a castle keep that you can look at, but not go into, a gorgeous recreation of a palace, gardens, and a lovely shrine, but except for a cluster of interestingly designed skyscrapers that I haven’t mentioned here, I don’t think there’s a lot else.

At least, not a lot else that interested me. There is a Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology that my walking tour app says is a must-see. The app says it presents Toyota’s history, including before it got into building cars, and showcases some of its robots that are powering its future. There are also at least a couple of art galleries in Nagoya, which I also wasn’t overly interested in. But, if that’s your thing, knock yourself out.

I think I chose the Goldilocks amount of time to visit Nagoya, two nights. For me, that was neither too long nor too short.