Took a quick two day trip to Nagoya Japan last Monday and Tuesday. I’ve been to most major cities throughout Japan, but it was my first time to Nagoya City. I truly had an awesome experience and was amazed at all the photo opportunites. I read a few articles online and got the consensus that it was a great place to live but not visit. I was thinking great, not another gray town with dead grass around it….laugh. To my surprise it was just awesome!!!
The Street Life is amazing!! There is a ton of color, colorful people, and activity all over the place. I found a terrific sense of old blended with new all over the place and it was a joy to photograph. Nagoya Castle was cool at first glance, but got boring really fast….So I was glad that I brought a couple of lenses and slowed down a bit. You really have to think about shots at the Castle otherwise you are going to get nothing but postcard shots. It was fun though trying get something different and I think I walked away with some fun shots.
The nightlife I unfortunately didn’t get to photograph this time around,nor did I fully tap into the endless Street possibilities, but I’m definitely heading back to Nagoya VERY soon indeed. I could seriously just sit on a street corner all day filling up my memory cards, and the best thing of all is that the people are damn nice!! My wife even mentioned to me that she thought the Nagoya people were some of the nicest she’s spoken with.
I also found the Nagoya area pretty easy to get around. Primarily I was in the Sakae area. I found I could walk to most of the main areas, but the Subway certainly is faster. I didn’t find it as busy as Tokyo or Yokohama even though Nagoya is known as the 4th largest city in Japan.
Finally, I can only think of one thing negative about Nagoya. I found it a bit diry compared to the other cities I’ve visited. The Central Park area was similar to the Kawasaki homeless areas although definitely not as big. It made for some great street photo opportunities and I did see lots of people picking up garbage and such, but for some reason stuff just blew back onto the street. No big deal, but I did find it interesting.
Sakae, Nagoya is definitely a must for Photography and if you are open minded and into shooting everything, plan on being there for a while. It’s a blast. EnjoY!
