January 15, 2011
8:24 PM
15 Jan 2011, Japan Day 8
I just realised my previous posts have been labelled as "Jan 2010". Talk about living in the past. O_o Changed them now!
Day 2 in Nagoya, visited 3 places: Tokugawa Art Museum, Nagoya castle, and Inuyama castle. Basically all 3 places covered the feudal era. Shoguns, castles, swords.. did I mention I have a fetish for swords? That was some really good stuff over there. The craftsmanship during that period was simply amazing. Not just the swords, but also various other crafts. Even stuff like playing cards.. the quality was exceptional. Especially love the lacquered wood.
Nagoya castle was mainly an exhibition for stuff during those periods. In fact, it was pretty much a museum in a castle. Quite a bit overlapped with the Tokugawa museum.
The castle has these 2 fish like thingies at each side of the roof. Somewhere through the museum, I found out that they were meant to be female dolphins. Imagine as I may, I see absolutely no connection between the 2.
The shogun armour is cool shit. Each warlord has his own unique set of armour. I also learnt that its a pain in the ass to put it all on.
Outside the castle area, there was this poster for a group of actors playing prominent characters from the era: tokugawa, maeda, etc. 3 of their faces were cut out for people to stick their heads in them. One of them was left intact.. some seemingly hot actor. A group of girls came over. Much to my dismay, they did exactly what crazy fangirls would do. No, not stick their heads there and taking photos of themselves. They all swiped out their camera phones and snapped away at the hot-looking Maeda. Sigh.. fangirls across the whole never change, do they?
Some of the actors performed a skit nearby later on. Made me reaffirm my faith in japanese acting and voice acting.
Inuyama castle didn't particularly stand out, aside from the fact that theres a castle town nearby. The view atop however was breathtaking, especially with the sunset.
Also realised that school girls, while hot as they are, can be pretty scary too. Ben took a shot from the ground, of a school girl standing at the highest level of the castle, looking into a camera. Looking at the shot, if you zoom in on her, it almost seems like a horror movie just waiting to happen.
We didn't get to see many school girls around Nagoya. The place itself seemed dodgy as it is. We can only wonder what they're up to. It was only until much later, that we realised that most of the life in Nagoya, its 'Orchard Rd', was located in the area called Sakae. Too late to go by then. Oh well. :(