Nagoya, Japan

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From our lovely stay in Kyoto, we continued eastward, where we made the train-equivalent of an extended layover in Nagoya en route to Tokyo. My friend Julianne happens to be living in Nagoya for two years, so we took the opportunity to do a one-night stay to say hello and even do some laundry!

Our hotel was right in the Nagoya train station, overlooking the bustling tracks and sprawling city. Very convenient for this brief stay!

Nagoya is known for miso katsu and miso udon, with this red miso. This was a popular miso udon chain, but the noodles were severely undercooked. Wouldn’t do again.

We visited Julianne and she was generous enough to let us do our laundry at her place! The whole bathroom converts into a dryer room so that you can dry that batch while drying the second one in the combo washer-dryer. Julianne even folded and delivered all the finished laundry to us the next morning. Wowow, so much better than our tedious all-day laundry debacle in Osaka. Thank you Julianne!

A collection of various pastries found in the Nagoya train station for breakfast! This Piyorin chickie dessert place was SO POPULAR with a line at all hours. Very cute! Like a light mousse-pudding-cake inside.

Tokyu Hands, endless department store that sells a little bit of everything!

We decided to be funny as Taiwanese Americans and go eat Din Tai Fung for lunch. The wait wasn’t terrible. The food was great, exactly as expected!

Then we paid a visit to the Noritake gardens and museum.

Noritake is a Japanese bone china company that was established at the turn of the 20th century to cater to Western tastes in ceramics. Really interesting! They have so many different style spin-offs and also such a strong history intertwined with Japanese manufacturing, especially in the manufacturing hub of Nagoya.

Contemporary Noritake designs, with collaborations with Studio Ghibli – Totoro – and the local Nagoya castle’s iconic whales.

Western tea sets.

I especially loved seeing these gilded paintings, which served as sketches of planned ceramics designs! They opened a shop in New York to be closer to the western trends they were trying to capture.

The museum really buried the lede though; it turns out the family behind Noritake actually started Toto, the beloved fancy toilet company!

A visit to the mall next door, where we found this fun Tstutaya bookstore.

Afternoon tea break!

And that was really it for our brief visit to Nagoya! Back to the train station.

So wonderful to hang out for a day, Julianne!

And we’re off to the last shinkansen leg — to Tokyo!

Anna Wu is a wedding and portrait photographer based in San Francisco. She compulsively documents and blogs all of her daily adventures. Follow her on instagram and view more of her professional work at annawu.com.


Taiwan & Japan, 2025

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