Days 1-5: Nagoya

Anyway, back to Tokoname, where pottery began. We also saw a huge kiln that was previously used to make the pottery. Exploring this little town was a very peaceful start to our Japan trip, since the rest of it is going to be in big cities and crowded with people. After returning to the hotel, we gathered our stuff, walked back to the train station at the airport and took a very crowded train, where we were huddled in standing with our suitcases by our feet for 40 minutes to the big city of Nagoya. We decided to take a taxi to our hotel from the main train station, which was a little difficult explaining where we wanted to go-I should’ve just put it into Google translate, but I didn’t think of it at the moment. Anyway, we made it and only had to pay like $7, not bad. Once again, we have two hotel rooms here, we’ve outgrown the days when we can share one! We have two full sized beds in our tiny room, but it works. We spent the afternoon/evening wandering around a shopping district of many interconnecting streets that are covered and lined with shops, restaurants, and gaming establishments. We had to separate here, the boys spent their time playing with capsule machines and claw machines, and buying Pokemon cards. Paul and I were in awe of everything but after walking a bunch, we stumbled upon a Belgium pub/Turkish restaurant, that Belgium beer was calling Paul’s name! We sat inside this little pub with bright red bucket chairs and lots of paraphernalia on the walls having a drink. Afterwards we reconnect with the boys and started discussing dinner, we ended up splitting up and Braydon and I sat at counter seats in a 8-seated Indian restaurant, while Paul and Kyle grabbed kebabs from a Turkish restaurant. I feel with my gluten intolerance and picky eating habits, we may have to split up a bunch, plus the restaurants are small, finding seats for 4 people may be difficult. We were all asleep by 8:30 PM!!

Paul and I woke up at 1:20 AM, and I immediately handed out melatonin to both of us, luckily we both got a few more hours of sleep after that. The boys apparently were not as lucky and were up by 3ish. Ugh. We all found stuff individually at the 7/11 around the corner for breakfast. Man, they have a lot of choices! Luckily most items have a tiny very basic English description on them, so we can read them. If you want any more information, we have to break out Google Translate. I know I’ve mentioned this previously, but for anyone reading this that doesn’t know Google Translate App has a camera feature, it’s amazing, you just hold it over the words and it translates for you. Get it now for your next international trip. (sorry that was my ad, too bad I don’t get paid!)We had some time before qualifying race started at the Grand Prix, so we took a taxi up to Nagoya Castle to walk around and see the beautiful Sakura (cherry blossom) trees. Inside the castle walls they had some sort of festival or farmer’s market, there were lots of food vendors set up, a stage with performers and everyone sitting under the beautiful trees eating, drinking and being merry. We walked around the castle grounds just admiring the architecture of the castle and the pretty grounds. The line to get into the castle was quite long so we did not go into it, we grabbed some food and sat outside for a bit. Then jumped into a taxi and off to the train station. It took us a bit to figure out the correct tickets to buy for the train, then we went and stood in a very short line to get onto the train. It was a rapid train and we luckily got seats, 45 minutes later we arrived to Suzuka Station. There we walked the 15 minutes up hill to the Suzuka Circuit, basically just following the crowds. Once there we found our seats and checked out the Fan Zone, bought some merchandise and watched the qualifying race. Suzuka Circuit is huge and walking from our seats to the fan zone and the main entrance was a long way! When we were leaving, we basically got swept up in the crowds and went out a different entrance, which dropped us into the attached amusement park area. It took us a bit to get out to the street again and this time we were 25 minute walk from the station. All of a sudden a line appeared before us on the sidewalk with a sign saying Nagoya, which was our destination. Thousands of people were in front of us in line, and it wrapped around a parking lot, up and down, up and down. We had no idea how long this was going to take us. There was no restroom in sight either! The sun started to set and the wind picked up and we were all hungry, cold, tired and had to pee. We only ended up waiting for 1 ½ hours in this line, but once we got on the train, it happened to be a local train stopping at every station and then all of a sudden, everyone got off and started running across the station to another train-so we assumed we had to switch trains here! Follow the crowd was our motto, since we couldn’t understand the announcements in Japanese. These trains were obviously very crowded and we had to stand for the second half of the trip. It ended up taking 4 hours to get back to our hotel after leaving Suzuka. We were exhausted, so ended up grabbing to go food in 7/11 and crashing. This put a damper on our excitement for the next day, actual race day, but we planned to go in early. We saw there was a 9:37 AM rapid train the next morning, and with the race starting at 2:00, we figured we’d be good.