Wasabi and Warriors: May 18, Day 10: The Incredible Hulking Buddha

Today, our last full day in Japan, was going to be somewhat of a chill day. Do a little shopping, then hang out in the castle garden for a bit, sit around in cafés, write the blog. Sounds good, right? Well, I made the mistake of getting on the internet while Lynda made the mistake of looking into her Nagoya brochure which led to the realization that we couldn't possibly leave without visiting some more places.

But first, breakfast. We wanted to try something different this time and chose a cafe named "Bonjour". It lived up to its name, being a dark, old - fashioned, French type of place with men sitting inside smoking and reading the paper. The waitress didn't speak any English and there was no English menu, but one of the smoking men came to the rescue and explained the menu. I was delighted to find out that this cafe serves a Nagoya specialty - red bean paste sandwiched in between white toast. Yes, white toast bread is the devil, but they had freshly run out of organic, sprouted whole grains.

The ceiling of the café was pretty neat

Luckily, we were going to walk off the empty calories by going to Osu Kannon Temple which is not only a famous temple, but is also the site of a twice - monthly flea and antique market. It's also located right at the entrance of a shopping arcade, making it very convenient to go spend all your money on manga outfits, then go pray for forgiveness at the temple. Or the other way around.

Science Museum on the way to the temple

Osu Kannon Temple

Osu Kannon Temple and view onto the antique market

Shopping arcade and some manga outfits

This restaurant is in a different arcade, but just thought I'd throw it in, because these are handsome burgers. As opposed to ugly burgers.

Next stop: Toganji Temple, featuring a 15 meter high green Buddha, along with elephants and monks. Quite the sight to see! There were also several other temples on site and a pet cemetery, complete with paw prints in the concrete. The wooden sticks around the animal statues have prayers or wishes written on them. On a certain day, the Buddhist priests or monks will gather them up, burn them, and release the prayers/wishes into the wind.

Some other sights while running around Nagoya:

Gorilla, Nagoya Castle, and an underground parking garage for bicycles by a subway station.

Next up: a special treat, namely a visit to a cat café! It's not really a café, but mainly a place you go to interact with cats. There was a separate room where you could get a drink from a machine, but the felines are what it's about. You can rent time with them in 1/2 hour increments. We only intended on staying 1/2 an hour, but it was so much fun, one hour was quickly over. The area wasn't that large, but there were many places for the cats to climb on, hiding spots, toys, and more. There was a profile of each cat posted with name, age, gender, likes and dislikes. The cats were greatly spoiled by the staff and each one was individually brought to bed at closing time. We had a very hard time finding the place with the street signage being very confusing, but we made it after running around in the rain for a while. We had been extremely lucky with the weather and it only rained on the evening of our last full day.