Snow and what to do with it

It's been a while since I last wrote a blog entry. I wasn't really motivated to do it lately (see post below). I guess there comes a time living in a foreign country when everything just becomes normal and doesn't feel fresh and exciting anymore. That's very dangerous. No matter where you are, I think you should always find ways of making things fresh and exciting. Even if, like me, you live in a place where the winter lasts for six months.

The people of Hokkaido have been a major inspiration to me in this regard. They get an incredible amount of snow each year, but this year has broken all records. The area I live in now is the world's official Snowiest Place 2012 (2011 was some place in California, by the way). It literally snows every single day. Trucks have to come in at times, take excess snow off the streets, and dump it into the next river or ocean. The snow walls towering over every street almost make you feel like you are a lab rat trying to find its way out of a snow-white maze.
Regardless, people here are still coming up with new creative ways of living both with and against the snow, so I decided to stop sulking and join them.

The obvious activity to try if you want to learn to appreciate large amounts of snow is of course skiing or snowboarding. Before I came here, I knew that I was going to live in a major ski resort. In fact I was hired because I come from an Alpine country with a "skiing culture", as they called it.
I hadn't been skiing in ten years, because it had always been too expensive and seemed like too much of a hassle. You have to put on seven hundred layers of clothing, buy or rent some costly gear just to fall down a hill in a more or less elegant fashion - was what I thought. But I couldn't let the community down, who expected the Austrian to bloody well go skiing. Plus, I needed some exercise anyway. There is no gym within walking distance and if you try to go jogging, you'll jog into an early grave what with all the ice and snow outside (at least with my sort of talent for movement).

To cut a long story short, I took part in a night skiing course my town offered for free (!) and i loved it! The snow here is truly fantastic, mostly because there is so much of it, but also because it's drier and the ski fields therefore aren't as hard and/or squishy as those in Austria, which has been suffering from lack of snow lately anyway.
It's like riding a cloud.

A friend of mine took this amazing picture when he came to snowboard in Niseko in January.

A more unpleasant winter activity around here is snow shoveling. I have to admit that I don't do a lot of this, because snow clearing is included in my rent, so every day a huge bulldozer clears the yard. However, my workplace organised a volunteer snow shoveling activity the other weekend to help Niseko's elderly. Japan suffers from an aging population, so a lot of elderly people living on their own in this area can't put up with the snow masses and get their houses literally buried under the snow. So we got divided into little troups of five to eight people and set off to clear one house off snow. The day before the event they had e-mailed us all a map of the houses' locations as well as pictures of the state they were in. In our case, the houses' windows were indicated by red arrows. At first I found this a little amusing, but when I saw the house I knew why: the windows had been buried under the snow and we probably wouldn't have been able to locate them without a plan.
We climbed the snow wall surrounding the house until we were standing on one level with the roof. There must have been at least two metres of hardened snow we were marching around on, it was quite exhilarating. Here's a picture of the first floor after we'd more or less cleared two windows:

As you can see the windows had already been bolted beforehand, to keep them from breaking under the weight of the expected snow masses.

About two weeks ago I observed the following scene in front of my workplace:

It's hard to notice the group of people on the garage roof, but lately it's become quite a common sight. If buildings have flat roofs, a couple of metres of snow can accumulate on them, which gets quite dangerous for the people walking past under them. So now every day you can see people standing on top of their roofs clearing them of snow. (Sometimes they have a helper taking watch on the ground. Sometimes not.)

But enough unpleasantness for now. Another way of reacting to Hokkaido's snow masses are the snow festivals that take place all over the prefecture. Usually snow caves or ice sculptures are built, or snow lanterns, which are then lit up by candles. We have one of those light festivals going on in Niseko right now, so please drop by.
The biggest of them all, however, is of course Sapporo Yukimatsuri (Sapporo Snow Festival) which attracts more people to Hokkaido than any other event on the island. Yukimatsuri is also the only occasion on which Sapporo is sure to be on Austrian television (that and when there's some major ski jumping competition going on). The reason for the festival's popularity are the huge snow statues built specially for the purpose. They line up along Oodori park, a huge park right in the centre of town.

 Taking the right pictures in the right spot is really important in Japan and the place was packed. So there were queues to be able to access the best photo spot to photograph a certain sculpture.

Many of the sculptures had popular mascots or cartoon characters as themes. Here's a huge Disney one.

 This is a snow replication of the Taj Mahal, because Japan and India were celebrating a diplomatic anniversary this year. Speaking of diplomacy and its opposite: a lot of the most elaborate snow sculptures had been built by the Jieitai (Japanese self-defense forces). Pretty amazing, but kinda makes you wanna make jokes about the army not having anything else to do, doesn't it?

 On the right there's a snow sculpture of Aizu castle in Fukushima. It is not surprising that the Tohoku region had a special place in this year's festival, as it was the setting of the earthquake disaster last March.

Several countries also offered contributions. This dragon came from Hong Kong. 2012 is the year of the dragon, according to the Chinese calendar.

(De)motivational filler

I've been here for almost five months. It doesn't feel like it at all. As far as I'm concerned it might as well have been two weeks, except the seasons changed twice in between.

However, I feel I've also come a long way. I can now lead a conversation in Japanese without suffering a heart attack and I'm learning new vocabulary at a rate of at least a hundred a week. I also feel that I'm slowly forming ties to the local people and feel less like a deer in the headlight at work. I'm kinda proud of all that. At the same time, I feel that nobody around me really seems to notice or even agree with what has been said above. I wonder when people will start taking me seriously... Especially at work, people tend to think I'm a lot more stupid than I actually am (or think I am). Perhaps I have a dumb look on my face whenever I concentrate or don't pay attention? If so, I shall be wearing one of those Japanese face masks from now on. If not, I wonder what I can do to make more progress in this respect...

My very first big Japanese wedding

Last Saturday I got to experience something that I thought I never would: a Japanese wedding. There is a chapter on weddings in the CIR handbook, but I just never thought I'd ever have to attend one. In Austria, weddings are very private things. You wouldn't invite most of your colleagues, let alone some random short-term gaijin from Europe, but in Japan, where getting married is still pretty much standard for pretty much everyone, things once again seem to be a bit different.

Well over two months ago a white envelope with my name on it landed on my desk. About 15 minutes later (my reading skills back then were even worse than they are now) it turned out to be a wedding invitation from K-san from downstairs. I pinned it to my wall and never thought any more about it until the day of the wedding started to draw nearer.

I had done all sorts of research about Japanese weddings and how to behave, because I really didn't want to have anything embarrassing happening to me. According to this research you have to give the happy couple a large sum of money (between 10.000 and 30.000 yen / 1000-2000€) depending on your relationship to the couple and place the notes in a special envelope along with some words of well-wishing. It is really important that the notes are new (i.e. fresh from the bank) and that an uneven number of notes is places in the envelope as even numbers are said to be unlucky. So this wasn't only going to be complicated, but also expensive.

For a long time, I didn't dare to ask anyone about it, because I didn't know if all of my colleagues had been invited. Imagine how awkward it would be to ask somebody "Hey, what do you think we should be wearing for K-san's wedding?" and get an answer like "What? He's getting married?", "WHAT? I thought everyone was going on a business trip that day and I should keep watch down here?" or even "Who the hell is K-san?"
Fortunately, my supervisor jumped to the rescue as she usually does and explained that most of the procedures described above weren't necessary at all in Hokkaido - oh blessed land! No envelope, no letter of well-wishing, you just pay the (admittedly quite large) sum of 13.000 yen at the wedding reception. Hurrah! She even sent me links  with explanations on what to wear. Also, it turned out of course that EVERYONE was invited. The whole yakuba. I should have expected this of course, because even I was invited and I am - as has been mentioned above - just a random part-time foreigner.


So on the big day we all put on a dress or suit, boarded a bus that was waiting in front of our workplace and were transported to Niseko Hilton, where the wedding was supposed to take place. The actual Shinto ceremony (if there is one) usually only takes place with the family around. Afterwards there is a reception and a big meal to which everyone is invited.
At the reception we got a nicely decorated brochure outlining the programme for the wedding as well as some friendly mocking brochures about the newlyweds and a seating plan. On the way into the banquet hall everyone had to greet the bride and groom, both dressed in traditional Japanese kimono The bride's one was white and she was covered in an enormous hood. As I don't wanna post close-ups of people I know without their permission, here's an example off google: http://factsanddetails.com/media/2/20090802-bridal2%20mit%20edu.gif

As I entered the enormous banquet hall of the Hilton to find my table, I soon noticed that the tables didn't have numbers, but names with festive or positive connotations, such as 寿 (long life) 幸 (happiness) or 祝 (well-wishing). I had been placed next to all the other non-Japanese town employees, which was a relief in a way as I'm relatively close to them and didn't have to chat to some horn-rimmed business dude I didn't know (there were a few of those around). Once dinner started though, I found out that the few Japanese people placed at our table were all employed by CLAIR - the Council of Local Authorities for International Relation. I thought that was just hilarious. "Sooo, where are we gonna put the foreigners?" - "Ah just seat them next to the foreign ministry, they are gonna know what to do with them!"
The CLAIR lady sitting next to me turned out to be from Kumamoto (way down in Kyushu) and really nice. She even knew one of my German CIR friends who is working at the same office as her, so we had a chat about our various duties. It was quite interesting talking to somebody on the "inside" as it were.

Young wedding enthusiasts

As for the wedding itself, it was VERY formal and ceremonial - like most Japanese festivities I have thus far experienced. It began with the newlyweds parading into the room (him still wearing his original clothes, she having changed into a red kimono). Then they had to stand still for a while, while the story of their lives was told by a moderator. They both looked a little bit like they were standing trial.
This was followed by a speech by the mayor and one or two other important people. Then dinner started being served. It was the usual 10 or so course kaiseki and very nice as would be expected from the Hilton  (and the 13.000 yen paid). The whole thing was accompanied by karaoke and other performances by close friends and relatives of the couple.

"The trial"

At some point the newlyweds had to ceremoniously open a barrel of sake with colourfully decorated hammers and then all the guests had to walk up to the bride groom, pour him a drink and do some formalised small talk with him - he must have been relatively drunk after that. That's how you do conversation at big Japanese parties in general btw: grab a bottle of alcohol, approach whoever you wanna talk to, pour and exchange pleasantries. When you are being poured at, it is important to offer your glass with both hands (lessons learned the hard way...)

Posh dinner

Shortly before dessert was served, the newlyweds appeared once again, this time dressed in western style suit-and-tie and white bridal dress. I've read somewhere that a large amount of money paid for a wedding actually goes into renting all these clothes. Buying them would probably cost you the sum that could buy a small house somewhere in the country. Anyway, they went around the room with a huge candle and lit all the candles placed at the guests' tables, once again exchanging some polite words. In the end the couple's parents, all dressed in suits (dads) and kimonos (mums) had to go on the stage to receive a bouquet of flowers as well as a letter of gratitude (tearfully read out loud by the bride).

The newlyweds greeting their parents

Then it was over. The whole wedding took about two hours, then we were all put back on the bus and taken into town. There was an opportunity to attend the nijikai (second round at any party), but it was kind of implied that those people not that close to the couple would have the decency not to attend. The gap between the ijikai (first round) and nijikai (second) is the only time that you can politely sneak away from the celebrations whereas those that wish to go on drinking can do so. I.e. all the colleagues went home whereas the friends and family stayed for the second round, which was probably where the real celebrations began. On the way out all were once again greeted by the couple - and this time their respective parents too.

In Japan it is customary for the guests to receive presents, so when I had arrived at my seat, a huge white bag had been waiting for me there. It contained a packet of sweets made in Niseko with the date of the wedding as well as the names of the newly-weds engraved in each biscuit.

Programme information and wedding present. Both have the Chinese character 寿 (kotobuki) -meaning "long life" written on them. At weddings you can find this character all over the place as it is supposed to bring luck. 

Should Europe learn more European stereotypes?

Growing up in  a tiny country on mainland Europe, I have ever since been used to the idea of finding a wealth of different cultures in a relatively confined space. In a lot of places it is possible to get in your car and drive for 30 minutes over the border of the next country and find people who look slightly different, behave slightly differently and speak one or several different languages. Some places will even have a different currency to your own, even though the abolition of border controls and the introduction of the Euro have made travel within Europe a lot easier. We have all that and the EU on top of it, but still the idea prevails that we are all in some way or other radically different from each other. Italians are Italians; French are French, Hungarians are Hungarians, Germans are Germans and Austrians are not, neither are Swiss, even though we all speak the same language and make sausages. These little differences, as many of them are made-up as are real, are very important to many Europeans and define the way we see ourselves and our place in the world. After all, Europe is the birthplace of nationalism.

However, this view doesn't at all prevail on different continents. Here in Japan I get confronted with ideas about Europe as a continent, that I had never considered before. I don't only get this from Japanese people, but also Americans, Australians or Chinese, essentially everyone who isn't European, but lives on a different continent.

Of course most people don't just regard Europe as one big loaf of lasagna, but have different ideas about Britain, France, Romania and what not. However, in the background is always some idea that it is all part of this ancient, culturally rich, magical place, where bread-eating people walk around as in museums, afraid to touch anything for fear it might finally crumble down on them completely. I am exaggerating of course - everybody's ideas about Europe and its constituent nations may be very different, but the important point for me is that people obviously have them.

While this has annoyed me on several occasions (for all I know the same is true for North Americans and Africans whose various states just get thrown in one pot by careless Europeans more often than not), in a way I am finding it rather nice. It makes me reconsider my bonds with areas that are indeed very close to my home in more than just one way, but that I have still always been reminded to define myself against. The next village over will always be slightly different to your own, but declaring it as Italian or Slovenian puts a border between your town and theirs that makes thinking about your relations in a straightforward way just very, very difficult.

In relation to the EU, you always hear about the importance of the "European Thought" (Europäischer Gedanke). How we should open up the borders, unite our relations and economies and all just get along. You also hear a lot about how so few people in Europe have this European Thought in them. It turns out a lot of people on different continents have some idea about it though. I for one have never felt particularly European before I came to Japan. Now I think I do and interestingly I am finding it very liberating. Of course, being defined by the part of the world you come from is never ideal, as this can only ever be a small part of who you are, but in some ways I would rather be associated with a whole continent than with an island inside an island inside a continent - the broader the better, right? Being a citizen of a continent might be one step closer to being a citizen of the world ;)

新雪谷 - New Snow Valley

... is how "Niseko" is spelled in Chinese. This has a nice ring to it and is also slightly more fitting than the Japanese kanji sometimes used for Niseko - 二世古 (Two Generations Old). Fitting because Niseko apparently is the second snowiest resort on Earth. Tourism websites swear that whereas other resorts just get snowed on every other week or so, in Niseko it just never stops snowing. Excellent conditions for skiers, but how about CIRs?

Anyway, today we got the first snow, which at least to me came completely unexpected. The weather forecast had forecasted it of course, but anything forecasted by the weather forecast is usually sure NEVER to happen. I always secretly thought weather forecasts were like some kind of latter-day cult for the elderly to hang on to.
Not so this time it turned out. When i drew back the curtains this morning, everything was white. I swore, got up, rescued my bicycle and headed out to work, on which occasion I took this picture:

The mountain still had its head (crater?) in a snow cloud.

In the course of the day I got really excited about the snow gently going on falling outside though and even started to feel a little christmassily nostalgic. I was about to forget myself and hum a little song, but the sombre overtone of Japanese bureaucracy prevailing in the office kept me from it.
Some people say this snow will probably melt again, but usually this place is snow-covered until well into April. Let's see how I feel about it then...

Nara

The day following the Nagoya trip, we went on our third and last day trip for the long weekend - Nara. Nara, after Kyoto is THE place if you want to experience some Japanese culture they say. Nara has tons of ancient temples and shrines for people to look at. I had been wanting to go there for ages, but didn't think I would manage to so soon!

The train journey from Ise to Nara took about three hours and therefore turned out to be a bit longer than expected. We took a relatively slow train and the ride was very exciting for me. We passed through a lot of countryside and the first thing I noticed was that it looked so - Japanese. The little onigiri-shaped hills, the terraced rice fields, the shrine gates at the entrance to forests, the pointed, tiled roofs, the paper-thin walls, everything looked like out of a travel guide. And then I realized that this is what Japan must look like for everyone living in Honshu all the time. It just felt exotic to me, because I live in Hokkaido. Honshu looks like Japan, Hokkaido looks like Hokkaido.
This realisation filled me up with both regret and gratitude at the same time. Regret, because I kind of felt sorry for a moment not having ended up in the "real" ancient Japan of the history books, gratitude because this allows me to take a fresh look at everything I encounter when travelling to the "mainland". The regret part was also soon forgotten, because Hokkaido is (not only literally) a pretty cool place to live.

It was a rainy day, but a Saturday nonetheless, so Nara was swarming with tourists. At midday the little streets and arcades leading up to Nara's main sights were packed with people looking for suitable places to have lunch. We found ours in a sushi place and then headed directly for Nara Park. Nara Park is a huge stretch of green which takes up a good half of the city. Almost all of Nara's famous temples and museum are located within Nara park. On top of that, Nara Park is not only populated by tourists from all over the world, but also by hundreds of "sacred deer" who live off specially purchasable snacks these tourists feed them.
They walk up to you in search for food and you can pet them or feed them. Apparently though, encounters with the deer do not always turn out that peacefully, which is why there are hilarious warning signs positioned all over Nara Park.
Unfortunately my camera's battery had died the day before and I only had my phone left to take pictures with. They turned out okay for the most part, but don't really do the scenery justice.

Nara park is full of Buddhist temples, on which you can read up anywhere on the internet, because I can't be bothered to copy and paste the info in here. Nara National museum for the large part is dedicated to Buddhist art as well. Unfortunately we didn't have time to go in, but we did see many of the temples. Many of them stand for Japan so iconically, I didn't even know they were located in Nara. A lot of stuff you will see on postcards or on the internet can in fact be seen in Nara park, such as the Five Story Pagoda and the Golden Hall.

The number one attraction in Nara Park though is Todaiji temple. It is the largest wooden structure in the world and home to Japan's largest Buddha stature (Daibutsu).

The healing statue

The sight of Todaiji really made me hold my breath for a moment. I've never seen anything comparable before in my life.
Next to entrance is an old Buddha statue that looks like some kind of zombie deity, but is actually famous for its healing qualities. If you touch its leg for example, and then your own leg, it will be cured (if there has been something wrong with it that is). My hip had been hurting of late; it does that whenever I walk around a lot, I guess I'm getting old.... Anyway, I tried to locate the Buddha's hip, then touched my own -  and nothing much happened. I guess he's just busy curing all these people, there is a long queue. The pain in my hip went away two days later actually, so maybe my turn had come ;)
After burning some incense we went into the temple to look at the famous Big Buddha of Nara, a sight which made me hold my breath a second time within ten minutes. The statue is so huge, a human can sit comfortably inside its nose.

Daibutsu, Todaiji

The picture of the statue was the last one I could take, because  shortly after my phone gave up the ghost as well. It wouldn't have done the atmosphere justice anyway, I suppose.

After the visit to Todaiji, we spent the time till nightfall wandering around some more around Nara Park. Again I was surprised that you could have such a quiet forest area right in the middle of a town. We walked up to Kasuga Jingu, which is famous for it's stone lanterns, some of them several hundred years old. I have never seen so many stone lanterns in one spot. Kasuga Jingu again is a shrine complex including several shrines all suiting different purposes. There were shrines that you should pray at if you are a certain "unlucky" age, shrines whose kami can heal very specific illnesses and even a famous shrine dedicated to things to do with love and marriage. You could buy little pink ema (votive tablets) and write your wish for your love life on them. People put the tablets up by the shrine to make their wishes come true. The tablets are public so everyone can read them and sometimes what is written on them can be heart-warming, sometimes pretty depressing. People even put their names, and in some cases their addresses on the tablets.

The last place we discovered inside Nara park was a little pavilion in the middle of a lake. I think I'd seen pictures of it somewhere before. The sun was just going down and since it was pouring with rain, only a few people were there. It was a very peaceful end to the day. One day I'd definitely like to come back and see the rest.

Nagoya

From Ise we went on to Nagoya, which is the fourth biggest city or so in Japan. Apart from that, I didn't really know anything about it, except that it was supposedly the most international city in Japan and a nice place to live; not only for foreigners. In comparison to Tokyo or Osaka, Nagoya seems to be neglected a lot and I've even heard people whisper that it was a bit boring for tourists, so I assumed it would be a typical chessboard-style Japanese city with lots of karaoke bars.
This proved to be true, but as it turned out, Nagoya is actually pretty ancient. It's just that almost all of it was destroyed during World War Two and the place basically had to be rebuilt from scratch. However, there seem to be plenty of places where you can experience Nagoya's past and present no problem.

I'm always excited when coming back into a big city. I really like the place I'm living in right now, which is essentially in the middle of a rice field in the mountains, but I suppose I'm really a city person. I love just being able to dive into the masses and doing my own thing. There's so much to observe and your environment is constantly changing. So contrary to feeling confined or stressed in cities, which many people complain of, I actually feel liberated.

The number one tourist magnet is of course Nagoya castle. The original castle was built in the 16th century, but as I have already mentioned, no much of it was left after the bombings, so what people did was they rebuilt most of it and turned the interior into a museum. Many of the magnificent wall paintings could be saved as well and were either put in the castle or in a museum in town (which we didn't go to see).

Nagoya Noh theatre

On our way to the castle we passed by Nagoya Noh Theatre, which reminded me of how much I would like to see some Noh at some point. I suppose sitting through a whole performance, which can take several hours, can be boring, but the slowness of the movements and the accompanying music has something strangely hypnotizing. It must be interesting if you try and reconstruct how this ancient form of theatre became this ritualised and abstract.
Anyway, on the right is a picture of the building, which was a nice mix between traditional and modern Japanese architecture.


Finally though we saw the silhouette of the castle approaching. It was a wonderful day and so hot you wouldn't think it was early November. You could walk around in a t-shirt and the leaves hadn't even properly coloured yet, whereas in Hokkaido, they'd already begun to fall off. Not only did it feel a bit like being in a different country, but also like travelling back in time into late summer.

I like Japanese castles. They have this kind of - can I say breezy? - feel about them. European castles are gloomy holes in the rock, which is cool in a really mysterious and creepy way of course, but Japanese castles have something light and graceful about them. Maybe because the materials are usually different (wood vs. rock), maybe because they usually have brighter colours.

We went inside the castle and heard a lot about its history and the Tokugawa family that had been living in it for centuries. You can read this history up on Wikipedia, because it is better at telling it.
You could actually go up several staircases until you ended up on top of the castle. From up there you've got quite a nice view of Nagoya.

...even if there isn't much to see. No Godzilla sticking out or anything.

Having seen the castle, we went on to see Osu Kannon temple, which is the main landmark of the Osu district. The temple is very colourful, very Chinese in appearance and dedicated to the goddess Kannon, in this case depicted as a Buddha. I'm finding Japanese Buddhism very confusing. It overlaps with Shinto so much, it's hard to wrap one's head around it. Some Buddhas are Shinto kami and the other way  around and people also behave quite similarly in Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. Indeed most people are both Buddhists and Shintoists at the same time, and the little oracles, talismans and votive tablets you can find buy at shrines, you can also buy at temples. People probably have no idea who started it and probably don't care either. The main difference might be that Shinto is responsible for life (i.e. rites to do with children, marriage, etc.), whereas Buddhist temples deal with the dead. I shall look into this further at some other point. Meanwhile, here's some pictures of the temple:

After having inhaled the incense-filled air long enough, we looked around Osu for a while for something to eat and discovered a Turkish restaurant! Strangely enough, I had been missing Turkish food more than Austrian food. It is just so much more present in everyday life in Vienna than traditional Austrian cuisine; it also is delicious! So we sat down and had the first kebab in three months. The shop was even run by a Turkish person, which made me feel even more nostalgic for Europe and all the different people that come together there in such a small space. Japan isn't very multicultural, so it's always surprising to find little international spaces inside Japanese towns.

The restaurant was located in a row of huge shopping streets, so we looked around there for a bit and later caught the metro to Atsuta Jingu. Atsuta Jingu is a big shrine complex in the South of Nagoya, situated in a park full of ancient trees. According to Lonely Planet (yes I know...) it is one of the most important shrines in all of Shinto. They say one of the imperial family's relics - the sacred sword - is stored there, although, as in Ise, you can't confirm it as you aren't allowed into the actual shrine. Atsuta reminded me of Ise in lots of ways in that it was kept very simple. Just huge wooden torii and a wooden shrine building in the middle of an ancient forest in the middle of a modern city.

We got there just when it was getting dark, so I couldn't take any photos with my point-and-shoot camera, but let me assure you that wandering around the shrine premises at twilight was extremely creepy, I loved it! It was like walking round some enchanted forest, just so quiet, even though the park was in the middle of a huge city. It is good that quiet and slightly mysterious places like this still exist in modern towns, even though the atmosphere is probably completely transformed during daytime.

Before we went on the train back to Ise, we dropped by Sakae, which is the central hub of Nagoya. It is here where most of the shopping malls and a lot of the nightlife is located. It seemed a bit like a mini- Shinjuku, just less crowded and more accessible. There was this really cool modern building, whose name I've forgotten. It looked like a spaceship made of wire and had several floors. The basement floor was shopping, but the top floors had strange names, such as Moonlight Space Unicorn Meadow (not really; but something to that effect) and were probably intended as installations.

The one on the right (left is NHK Tower)

We walked up on the roof to get a better view of Sakae and found out that the roof was made of glass and the top floor consisted of a transparent, artificial pond. You could see all the floors through the water, but at the same time, the pond reflected the city lights.

Unfortunately we only were in Nagoya for one day. As always, it was hard for me to leave the big city. I would have liked to wander around and go discover some more. Maybe I'll come back some day...