We said good bye to Hotel CLAD and took a taxi from the hotel to Mishima station, where we boarded the Shinkansen to Nagoya. I reserved the Shinkansen tickets early so that we can have reserve seating in the Green class (more comfortable class). The reservation also allowed for the oversize luggage that we had, which we stored in the allocated area behind our seats. This was super convenient.
To reserve our seats, we used the iOS app from the Central Japan Railway Company. Before I booked any tickets, I had to create an account first and for some reasons my TD Visa failed on the verification. However my AMEX card was fine with the registration. It looks like anything related to transportation, such as Pasmo and train reservation I have more success with AMEX.
During our stay at Nagoya, the Pasmo IC card in our Apple Wallet was super handy to take the local subways, buy stuff from local Seven Eleven and FamilyMart, which are literally on almost every other corner. In these convenience store we found a new love for Japanese sandwiches. They were simply delicious.
The JapanTravel iOS app was also very useful in navigating the subway lines and local transit.
Aside from snacks and finger food from the convenience stores, we also had a few meals from the local restaurants here. In one sushi restaurant, the food was a bit underwhelming to be honest. I could not tell the difference between this restaurant and a very good sushi restaurant from Toronto. Also the sushi chef did not really rolled out the red carpet for us, and we felt like we had finish our meal and leave in a hurry. It did not help that no one there speak any English. Perhaps, I am simply not a sushi connoisseur. The ramen and BBQ beef place was very good and I really enjoyed both meals especially for the price. We had the Hida Beef lunch at 飛驒牛一頭家 馬喰一代 名古屋WEST, and the ramen at 麺屋 やま昇.
We also took time to visit the Nagoya Castle. Since we are staying right next door to it, we had to visit the signature tourist location of the city. I will let Carol’s videos speak volumes of our visit. The AirBnB place that we got was on the penthouse of the Howa BLDG. The place is really nice and I would not mind recommending this place to anyone else who is planning to visit Nagoya.