Travel Guide Nagoya

With its 2,300,000 inhabitants, Nagoya is the fourth largest city in Japan. As an industrial metropolis, it offers, a priori, few tourist attractions compared to its rivals. Nevertheless, the city can seduce by its originality and the distance taken compared to its competitors, Tokyo or Kyoto and Osaka. It also hosted the 2005 Expo. Nagoya is located at the end of Ise Bay, 350 km from Tokyo and one hour from Osaka (180 km). As the feudal capital of Owari province, it gradually expanded onto the Nobi alluvial plain. Benefiting from both the shallow bay and the vast, rich plain, it is above all beautifully situated on Japan's commercial, political, and religious axis, the Tōkaidō. The construction of the railroad, moreover, has made Nagoya an inescapable capital. Its industrial and commercial development is due, first of all, to the foresight of the city's various councillors, but also to the development of textile activities. The city had 1.5 million inhabitants in 1940. In 1945, half of the city was razed to the ground. It is on this bare surface that the business district was able to develop south of the castle. This area is now criss-crossed by wide avenues lined with banks, corporate headquarters and hotels. To the south of the railway line, the industrial districts develop as far as the port. This one is not very deep (about ten meters only). In spite of an important part devoted to exports (textile products, machine tools, cars, etc.), the port admits its weakness in imports, which choose Kobe or Yokohama more readily. At present, the industrial development of Nagoya is located in the Ichinomiya and Toyota region. After the war, the city became the cradle of pachinkos : these famous vertical pinball machines are still built today, more ubiquitous in the immediate suburbs of Nagoya than anywhere else in Japan.