Sunday, December 6, 2009

名古屋 その2(nagoya sono ni): Nagoya 2

Each place has its specialty. Nagoya's special foods are called Nagoya meshi (名古屋めし) in Japanese. Some of them are miso katsu (味噌カツ: cutlet with miso sauce), doteni (どて煮: miso stew of variety meat), miso nikomi udon (味噌煮込みうどん:Udon noodle cooked in miso soup), kishimen (きしめん:flat wheat noodles), tebasaki (手羽先:fried chicken wing), Nagoya kochin (名古屋コーチン:Nagoya cochin), hitsumabushi (ひつまぶし: rice and eel), tenmusu (天むす: rice ball with tempura), uiro (ういろう:steamed cake made of rice flour and sugar). Since haccho miso (八丁味噌) is very famous, their seasonings are rather thick and heavy for the people from other region.
The most famous sight seeing places are Nagoya castle (名古屋城:nagoya jo) and Atsuta shrine (熱田神宮:atsuta jingu).
There are four sister cities in four countries. They are Los Angels since April. 1, 1959, Mexico City since Feb. 16, 1978, Sydney since Sep. 16, 1980, and Torino since May 27, 2005. In all of these cities the Olympics were held.
Another things famous in Nagoya is the width of the road, it is called 100 meter's road.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

名古屋: Nagoya

How many cities in Japan do you know?
I went to Nagoya (名古屋) this weekend. Nagoya is located in the central area (中部地方: chubu chiho), and is the seat of the prefectural government (県庁所在地: kencho shozaichi) of Aichi(愛知), and one of the ordinance-designated cities (政令指定都市: seirei shitei toshi).
It is the fourth most populous urban areas (2,257,888 in Oct. 2009) in Japan. No. 1 is Tokyo (東京:8,742,995 in Jan. 2009), No.2 is Yokohama (横浜:3,654,427 in Jan. 2009), No. 3 is Osaka (大阪:2,661,700 in Oct. 2009).
The three men who unified Japan in the 16th century have strong links to Nagoya. They are Oda Nobunaga (織田信長:1534-1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉:1536-1598), and Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康:1543-1616).
I have lived there for 6 months while I was working at Expo 2005 Aichi Nagoya.

Friday, December 4, 2009

E.T.の日(i tee no hi):Day of E.T.

On December 4, 1982 the movie E.T. was released in Japan. More than 10,000,000 people watched. It has been the best hit movie until 1997 when Mononoke hime (もののけ姫), Princess Mononoke exceeded by 14,200,000 audience.
E.T. is Extra-Terrestrial. I liked the movie very much. What movie do you like? I like "Pay It Forward."
I have been to the theater for 22 times this year so far. Among them I liked This Is It by Michael Jackson, The Time Traveler's Wife, Red Cliff Part II, Slumdog Millionaire, and The Rare Case of Benjamin Button. I hope to see some more this month.