Length: 23.3 km

Duration: 7:22

Total ascent/descent: 185/-181 m

Max/min slope: 2%/-2%

Wayfinding: easy.

Weather: sunny, hot

Overnight: Hotel Heikan

A loop through the city of Nagoya visiting the Maruzen bookshop, Osu shopping arcade, Atsuta Jingu, Tokugawa garden, and Hisaya Odori park.

Atsuta Jingu

Very impressive old camphor trees. Large Shinto shrine.

Streets

Nagoya streets were very typical of Japanese cities: large blocks of office or commercial buildings in business districts, and smaller residential blocks with narrow streets in grid otherwise and interspersed with cafés and parking lots.

But really, I only took this walk because I wanted to prepare for my long walk the next day, or rather for the next three weeks. Between the sights there wasn’t actually that much to see. So public transport is recommended.

Tokugawa Garden

Beautifully manicured garden, very formal, certainly too formal for me. The rocks were so well shaped and smoothed that they couldn’t be anything but artificial. However, the overall effect was still very beautiful. It was certainly very nice to walk in and feast on the design for your eyes. Lots of mosquitoes though.

Hisaya Odori Park

I only stumbled into this park at the end of the loop on my way back to the hotel. It was a gem because it provided a relief to the Japanese urban landscape which is very concrete and blocky. The park literally follows the big avenue that it is named after and runs along for many blocks. Having the TV tower in the middle of it is an inspired choice I thought. Somehow what tends to be obliged in the cities skyline, in my eyes anyway,the Guo one is pleasant to behold on top of greenery.