Golden Dolphins of Nagoya

About two weeks ago, Stefan, a good friend of ours from Rice, came to visit. Together, we took a trip to the nearby city of Nagoya to do some exploring.

The sightseeing highlight was definitely Nagoya Castle known for the golden dolphins on its roof. The fact that these dolphins have teeth is both amusing and troublesome to me.

The castle was built in 1612 but unfortunately most of it was burnt down in 1945 during the World War II air raids. So, what we see today is a rebuilt/reinforced version of the original. Some tour guides joked about how Nagoya Castle was also destroyed by Godzilla, Gaos and Battra. Even the revered dolphins were not immune to the chaos, as their gold scales were often the target of theft.

The golden dolphins were not just adorning the castle's roof. They appeared everywhere around the city - as cookies, as mascots, on receipts, on signs, on sewer covers...sugoi desu ne !


One other thing worthy of visiting in Nagoya was the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology. Half of the museum was devoted to the Toyoda family's beginning in the textile machine industry. The other half was devoted to their current automotive focus. In addition to the obvious learning of facts, we also saw a robot that could play trumpet amazingly with its special mechanical lips and hands, we played with an extremely large lever and spent some quality time in a wind tunnel. (obligatory pun) Needless to say, we were blown away!

Chris and Stefan were also great sports to accompany me to the Orchid Garden, a pretty neat botanical garden type place which advertised itself as "a dreamlike oasis in the city, a pleasurable and resourceful place to visit for garden enthusiasts." The brochure said there were 20,000 orchids from 250 species on display. Based on the number of sweet photos I took, I'd have to guess they were correct.