Originally Posted by
ksandness
I wouldn't consider Nagoya a top sightseeing spot. It's a pleasant enough city, but it doesn't have a lot that's of interest to the foreign tourist.
For Nagoya, I was mainly planning to go to one or more of these:
http://museum.jr-central.co.jp/en/
http://www.toyota.co.jp/Museum/english/
http://www.tcmit.org/english/
Ages ago, I'd taken a Toyota plant tour which left from
http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/about_toy...kaikan/museum/, where I looked around. I don't plan to revisit, as there's no need.
Originally Posted by
ksandness
I second the recommendation for Himeji Castle (the best in Japan, in my opinion, and Himeji is an attractive town with a tree-lined approach to the castle), sightseeing in Nagasaki (it had a lot of history before it became notorious as the second city to be atom bombed), and Kurashiki (the section along the canal looks like something out of a samurai movie; most easily reached by taking the Shinkansen to Okayama and a local to Kurashiki. Shin-Kurashiki isn't anywhere near the interesting part of town.)
Hmm, last night, I realized I have a potentially big problem due to limited time in Japan. I hadn't planned this trip w/a train ride from Nagasaki to Tokyo/Nagoya and sightseeing along the way.
My battleship island tour is on Thurs Oct 29th 1 pm. The earliest I can leave depart from Nagasaki is immediately after the tour ends.
I need to be a Tokyo Motor Show on Monday Nov 2nd and Wednesday Nov 4th. But, as I mentioned, I want to go to Nagoya for one or both of those museums. I'm not clear how long I should spend at either.
I fly from NRT to ICN at 6:25 pm on Thurs Nov 5th. I fly back to SFO on Nov 8th.
I thought about changing my NRT to ICN flight so that I only have a few hours layover instead of a few days. That was impossible due to the timing of the flights. If I made it a 1 day layover, United was going to hit me w/change fees and ticket price difference of over $1K total... No thanks!
That's nuts considering all 3 of my international flights (SFO > HND, NRT > ICN, ICN > SFO) were only $848 total w/tax.
I might be able cancel it completely and get credit minus $300 UA change fee (ugh!) and rebook w/another airline so that I have more time in Japan.