One good thing about Nagoya and living in the city in general is that there is almost always something new to go to and explore. Naturally, most of us study abroad kids take pretty good advantage of that on our breaks, our weekends, and the days we get out of class a little bit early.

So after randomly stumbling upon the Planetarium and Science museum back during Christmas break (we knew it was around somewhere…), we’ve been dying to come back and actually see what the place has to offer. And finally, a few days ago, we got around to it!

It was a lot more fun than I expected it to be. Perhaps because it wasn’t as horribly crowded as it usually is. The place only opened last March, so everything is still fairly new and shiny.

There were a lot of very interesting exhibits, many of them hands-on and fun to play with, despite the fact that we can’t read Japanese very well, let along Japanese on the subject of Science, but we enjoyed ourselves. The planetarium is said to be the biggest in the world, which was great and all, if not for most of the hour-long presentation being somewhat dull and strangely concentrated on auroras. I fell asleep twice. 

It was pretty nifty, all the same. We got to see the inside of a rice cooker and vending machine, play with water-operated machines, see a wall-sized period of elements, and watch a tornado being made out of thin air!

Another thing we partook in recently was commute exploring. A friend and I take the same line to school, and the five stops we have before our transfer have always fascinated us, so we took a day to go down the train line and stop off at every station and see what the place had to offer.

This is what we found:

Location: Nagoya, Japan