Our second stop in Japan was Nagoya, a couple of hours’ bullet-training west from Tokyo. Have you heard of Nagoya? To my shame I had not, before this trip. 

Here are some things I learned about Nagoya, which I now regard as a place I definitely should have heard of. The metropolitan area of Nagoya is home to more than 10 million people, which makes it more populous than London and home to considerably more people than Scotland. It is Japan’s biggest port and its industrial base (Toyota, Lexus, Mitsubishi, many others) produces most of Japan’s profitable exports.

If you’re on honeymoon, though, it doesn’t have famous sights and it is not a tourist city, which is why we spent one night and one day there. There is only one reason tourists from overseas come to Nagoya, and that is Ghibli Park.

Ghibli Park is the theme park run by Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animators behind My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke and so on. Rather than being full of rollercoasters and rides, it’s about experiences, and tries to immerse you into the world of the films.

Before that, we had a night in the Marriott in central Nagoya, which was easily the biggest hotel I’ve ever stayed in and one of the fanciest. It stood above the central station, and our room was on the, I don’t know, fortieth floor or something ridiculous, offering panoramic views of the city and all the toy trains moving about below us.

Our favourite thing about the hotel was the ridiculously opulent lifts, which had golden mirrored walls and seating. 

The following morning, a journey first on the metro and then on a maglev (more on which in a future post) brought us to the gates of Ghibli Park’s world of whimsy.

Everything about the park is designed with amazingly thoughtful detail. Also, because it’s Japan, this theme park is spotlessly clean and everything looks fresh and new, despite it being thronged with people and small children. 

We spent most of our time in the indoor part of the park, which is called Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse, mostly because a majority of the main exhibits are in there, but also because it was air conditioned and crisply cool. Outdoors it was – on this day and for almost our whole stay – in the high thirties and extremely humid. 

In the warehouse we found a prop store, which seemed to be objects that were sometimes used around the park, kept here where you could see them close up. 

One part of the warehouse is modeled on the places in Arrietty, a film about a family of borrowers, so you can enter a giant world and look like a borrower yourself.

We got a picture at the grating where Sho leaves Arrietty a sugar cube, and climbed inside a glass jar in the garden. 

The warehouse was also just full of cool things – hanging in the air above one area was a ship from Castle in the Sky.

Lunchtime was interesting – the cafe served an oddly Japanese version of western theme park food, including shrimp tempura pizza and spaghetti sandwiches. Our (more conventional) sandwiches came with little flags showing characters. The flags you got were random, as confirmed by the sign at the checkout, which stated clearly that “you cannot request a specific flag, the flag chooses you”.

The main indoor attraction – for which there were long queues – was the hall of photo opportunities where you could insert yourself into famous scenes from Ghibli movies. We did all of these, but the ones below are a few of our favourites. 

Then we headed out to find some of the outdoor sights. You could visit the house from My Neighbour Totoro, exquisitely recreated right down to the contents of every cupboard and drawer. On the way, one of the benches along the path had Mae’s hat and corn cob sitting on it. 

There was also the Valley of Witches, which was set up like an English village, and combined scenes from Kiki’s Delivery Service with Howl’s Moving Castle and various other films. There was a carousel too, which we obviously went on, having not had a go on one since the 18th July. 

Ghibli Park was an amazing day out, and we didn’t need to be super fans to love it. Kate came away with a firm determination to watch all the rest of the films that we haven’t yet seen. I’m not sure what else Nagoya offers but I’m pretty happy that we spent our one day there the best possible way. 

In the evening we picked up our bags from the hotel and boarded another bullet train, this time heading one hour further west to an extended stay in Japan’s most popular tourist city. 

Next time: Kyōto!