For one of our day trips outside of Nagoya, I took my sister to visit Inuyama. I was in Inuyama the previous month, but only managed to visit the castle. This time we had a few places on our list, including Meiji Mura and a tour of the Kiso River.

We made the mistake of leaving too late in the morning and didn’t arrive at Meiji Mura till close to lunch. From Nagoya it’s a 30 minute train ride, then another 20 minutes on the bus. By the time we paid our admission and got inside, we pretty much beelined for a restaurant to eat lunch.

A lot of my friends highly recommended visiting Meiji Mura and I could tell why once I got there. From the moment I stepped inside the park I felt like I was transported to another era in time. Meiji Mura houses one of the largest collection of buildings from the Meiji period. Most of the building have been brought to the location and rebuilt. There are five areas inside to explore and the entire park occupies 1 million square metres of space. This is why I completely regretted not arriving right when the park opened, cause it was impossible to see everything inside.

For lunch we ended up at a restaurant called Hekisuitei. Both my sister and I ordered their Hida gyunabe teishoku. For some reason I was craving nabe that day even though it was still sweltering hot outside. At least the restaurant was air conditioned. =P

Afterwards we picked up our ‘all you can ride pass’ to get on the antique sightseeing bus. They made a mistake with our passes originally so we had to go exchange them. If you buy the pass with the admission price, then it’s 2,700 yen altogether. I think it’s a pretty good deal because it lets you hop on and off the bus, and also lets you take their steam locomotive and ride their trolleys. However, you really need to check the schedules in advance because they don’t come very frequently so you might be stuck waiting for a while.

Our plan of attack was to take the bus from the main terminal to Area 4 on the map and then explore all the buildings on foot. There is an insane amount of buildings to cover but it was really interesting going inside all of them. One of the highlights was going to the Imperial Hotel and seeing the lobby designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Since we were already at the back of the park, we ended up waiting to board the steam locomotive which would take us back down to Area 4. Then we switched over to the trolley and spent some time visiting the buildings in Area 3. We knew we weren’t going to make it to all the areas before closing. My sister also gave up on visiting Inuyama Castle, even though we had tickets for it. We hastily made it to all the areas in the park just before closing. At least we managed to see everything from the outside!

After taking the bus back to Inuyama Station, we grabbed a bite to eat close by. Originally we wanted to eat something by the old town, but once we got there we found out nothing was open. (T_T) Hence we backtracked and grabbed something off the main street.

Later that evening we walked over to the Kiso River where we would be boarding our boats for the tour. I had called in advance to make reservations for a ukai tour. Ukai is also known as cormorant fishing and it has over a thousand years history in Japan. It runs from the beginning of June to mid October, so it’s a good thing to keep in mind if you are going in the summer. Fishermen will put a leash on each of their cormorants and take them out on a boat to catch smelt. Then they will light a fire at the bows of the boats in order to attract the fish to the surface.

It was incredibly interesting seeing it live in action. Basically all the tourists were loaded onto separate boats. Every two boats will have a cormorant boat in the middle and the boats move along the river at the same time. I don’t think words or pictures could describe how amazing it was, so I highly recommend either going in person or watching videos.

I think Inuyama has made it to the top of my favourite places to go as a side trip from Nagoya. If I have a chance next time, I would love to go to Little World, which is another theme park in the area. Until next time!