Nagoya, Japan
Nagoya highlights
Ghibli Park
Legoland
Why visit Nagoya?
Our main reason for visiting Nagoya was to go to Ghibli Park. While in Nagoya we also decided to go to Legoland. Nagoya also has a Toyota museum, science museum, railway museum, amusement park, and castle.
Getting there and around
We tried to send our luggage between the two Sotetsu hotels in Hiroshima and Nagoya but they couldn’t offer the payment in advance option (payment had to be cash on delivery, and we couldn’t guarantee arriving at the next hotel in time to pay the courier).
Instead we sent our luggage from a 7 eleven store to our airport hotel in Haneda, keeping with us just a few changes of clothes and essentials for our stay in Nagoya.
We think the luggage forwarding courier service is astonishing, and even more amazing that it can be done from a convenience store!
From Hiroshima we took the Sakura Shinkansen to Shin-Kobe and then transferred to the Hikari Shinkansen to Nagoya. We had reserved seats on both trains which we’d booked online using our JR passes about a week before. The journey took us just under 3 hours.
Trains are our favourite way to travel because there are no long queues for immigration or security, leg space is usually decent, you can bring your own food and drinks, and there is no motion sickness. Bonus points for trains with sockets for iPad chargers which help keep the kids happy!
We stayed in a hotel very close to Nagoya station and used the city’s excellent subway network to get around. We used our SUICA cards to pay the subway fares. SUICA cards provide an amazing integrated ticketing system that worked seamlessly for us, on all modes of transport and all over Japan.
Accommodation
In Nagoya we stayed at the Sotetsu Freesa Inn (Nagoya Shinkansen Station branch). This hotel was identical to the one in Hiroshima. It was a basic budget option in a location handy for Nagoya station. There were a couple of convenience stores near the hotel.
Once again we had small connecting rooms, one with twin beds and one with a double. The rooms were compact but compared to the Sotetsu in Hiroshima, the layout of the rooms in Nagoya provided a little more space around the beds (cost £120 per night, £60 per room).
Ghibli Park
Our main reason for including Nagoya in our trip to Japan was to visit Ghibli Park. Ghibli Park opened in late 2022 on the site of the Nagoya Expo 2005.
Ghibli Park takes visitors into the world of the Studio Ghibli films. At the time of our visit in Spring 2023 there were three areas:
the Grand Warehouse;
the Dondoko Forest (with a recreation of Satsuki and Mei’s House); and
the Hill of Youth (from Whisper of the Heart).
And two more zones were still under construction: Valley of the Witches and Mononoke Village.
We tried and failed to get tickets for the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo so we were keen to visit Ghibli Park instead.
We booked tickets for the Park 2 months in advance (they sell out quickly). As international visitors, at the time we were only eligible to buy tickets for the Grand Warehouse area (cost £25 for 4 tickets). We understand that since our visits more areas have opened, and international visitors are permitted to visit these areas.
We got to the park via the Higashiyama subway line from Nagoya station and then the Limino rapid transit line which was originally built to serve the Expo. The journey took about an hour from Nagoya station and we used our SUICA cards though in hindsight could have used our JR passes for the Higashiyama subway portion of the journey.
The Grand Warehouse was indoors which was good because it was pouring with rain when we visited. It had sets and props from the films, film posters, kids play areas, and a cinema showing an exclusive short. The film we saw was Koro’s Big Day Out and it was a delightful story about a puppy.
Minami-Machi was a traditional street with little shops selling books, sweets and model making kids. .
The House Below and the Little People's Garden took us into the world of Arrietty.
The kids’ play area included a cat bus and little model town based on the Higashi-Koganei area in Tokyo, where children could role play and interact with things such as a train ticket machine, laundry, and ramen bar.
There was also a merchandise shop and a cafe serving sandwiches and pizza. The shop had some exclusive products, and the cafe food was good quality.
The Park felt to us a little bit like a prototype, not yet fully developed and with more to come. We felt it missed a little bit of magic and didn’t feel extraordinary enough. The exhibits captured the world of Ghibli beautifully - full of colour and textures; but these were at odds with the building itself.
In the Grand Warehouse there were glass panelling and metal struts everywhere - a reminder that the building was actually built for an economic expo. The Ghibli elements felt levered in because the buildings hadn’t been purposefully designed.
This was particularly the case for the cafe, which was originally the expo cafe. A few model aeroplanes and some Ghibli themed flags on the sandwiches didn’t stop us feeling like we were at a business conference.
The exhibitions were fun and cute, but we felt there wasn’t enough to see on Hayao Miyazaki’s creative process. Where were the photos of Miyazaki at work, the explanations of how the animations are made, and credits to the teams of people who must bring the ideas to life? A lovely exhibition all about animating food for the films, with sketches and inspiration sources started to give us glimpses.
The Park could do more to highlight the craft and skill of Ghibli Studio, and we felt this was missing at the expense of Instagram selfie-spots. To be fair, other visitors seemed most happy when queuing for the character and set photos so perhaps we are in the minority in holding this view.
We think that the Ghibli Park will be amazing when it’s completed in 2024. Until then, we’d recommend visitors continue to try and get tickets for the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo in the first instance.
For those who do make the effort to go to Nagoya to visit Ghibli Park, it’s worth knowing what to expect. The experience is more akin to the Harry Potter Studio tour in London (but smaller and lower key), and not at all like Disneyland (no rides, shows, or meticulously themed lands). Expect long queues for selfie spots, and lots of shuffling with the crowd to view the exhibits.
Overall the Grand Warehouse was a whimsical place that provided a fun and unique day out for us. We absolutely loved all the detail in the exhibitions, and the short film Koro’s Big Day Out was wonderful to see. As big fans of the movies, we were glad we made the effort to go to the Park, and if we were to return we would probably try and visit again, but as a day trip from Kyoto.
Legoland
On our last day in Japan we decided to visit Legoland. A quick 30 minute journey from Nagoya station, Legoland Japan was easy to get to. We purchased tickets on arrival (cost £125 for 2 adults and 2 children) because the online booking website didn’t work for us.
Legoland Japan has 8 themed areas: factory, bricktopia, adventure, knight’s kingdom, pirate shores, mini land, Lego city, and ninjago world.
The theming and design was strong, and unlike at Legoland Denmark where the Lego had been moved to Lego House, this version of the park had a good mix of Lego themed rides and actual bricks to play with in each area.
We enjoyed the creative activities including building a boat and seeing if it could float down river rapids; creating mini builds; driving off-road remote control vehicles; and a factory tour to see how Lego bricks are made.
The rides were all pretty tame, the fastest being the dragon rollercoaster. Most of the rides are aimed at young children and are gentle and slow. We visited on a weekday and the park was very quiet apart from a few toddlers.
Mini land was fantastic, with cute miniature recreations of lots of places we’d visited in Japan including Kyoto’s Fushimi Inari, Miyajima Island, Asakusa, and Tokyo Station.
After a fun day out at Legoland we caught the Shinkansen from Nagoya back towards Tokyo. We caught a glimpse from the train of the snowy peak of Mount Fuji on the way which was rather special!
Alighting at Shinagawa we took the subway to Haneda Airport. We stayed overnight at the Royal Park Hotel at the airport, ready for our early morning flight home the next day.
Note that originally we were supposed to fly out from Osaka, but our flights were changed and we had to backtrack to Tokyo.
It was this final return trip on the Shinkansen to Tokyo that really meant our JR passes paid off. Had we travelled one way from Tokyo to Osaka and flown home from Osaka it would have been more economical to buy separate train tickets along the way.
Final thoughts
Nagoya is a major economic centre but not as reliant on tourism as other parts of Japan. It didn’t feel like a touristy city and, if we are honest, felt a little generic to visit. In hindsight we could have stayed longer in Kyoto and visited Ghibli Park as a day trip from there.
We loved Japan! We are so glad we got to visit this fun, exciting, beautiful, efficient and fascinating country.
We are planning a return trip because there was so much that we loved and want to see again, and so much more we’ve yet to see.
