Nagoya doesn’t have a single obvious neighbourhood to base yourself in the way Kyoto or Osaka does — it comes down to what you’re prioritising. Nagoya Station (Meieki): the default choice, and the right one if you’re passing through on the Shinkansen the way I did. Everything — trains, department stores, an entire underground food and shopping city...
Nagoya’s food culture has a name: Nagoya meshi. It’s bold, built on rich red hatcho miso, and it doesn’t apologise for any of it — this is a city that serves pork cutlets under miso sauce instead of the usual tonkatsu sauce, and treats deep-fried chicken wings as a food group. If you’re wondering where to actually eat it, here are thirteen...
I got into Nagoya on a late Shinkansen from Tokyo, checked into a hotel two minutes from the station, and had exactly one day to see a city most people skip entirely. Nagoya sits on the Tokaido Shinkansen line between Tokyo and Kyoto, and a lot of travellers treat it as nothing more than a place the train passes through. I wanted to know if that reputation was fair...