Planes, Trains and Automobiles in Nagoya

And some other things to see in the city as well

The FDR presendential Packard 12 at the Toyota Automoible Museum

Nagoya, roughly in the middle between Tokyo and Osaka is the third largest metropolitan area in Japan. It’s not a place tourists tend to visit because it is pretty much lacking historic temples, views of Mt Fuji and other nature and so on. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a visit for a day or two, or more if you use it as a base to visit say Okazaki or parts of Gifu.

Anyway on to the topics in the title.

Planes

Nagoya has two airports Komaki and Chubu. Both have museums attached and both museums are worth visiting, but probably only if you are using the airport to fly. Komaki is used a lot by Fuji Dream Airlines, which (as I write this) offers a special JPY10,800 / flight ticket on any route for overseas visitors. Chubu is bigger (and further away, but there’s a train instead of a bus) and is used by lots of airlines including various international “low cost carriers” so it can be a good way for overseas tourists to enter/leave Japan. It’s also used by FDA to fly to Izumo and Kochi as well as quite a few other domestic airlines.

Komaki Museum of Flight

You can walk to this from Komaki airport or if you catch the airport bus from Nagoya city it will stop here.

The museum is heavily concentrated on Mitsubishi aircraft (including a WW2 Mitsubishi Zero) since Mitsubishi’s aircraft factory is next door but there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t have any pictures of this museum because I’ve not personally visited it. My wife did and said it was small but interesting.

Chubu Flight of Dreams

This is basically a building next to Terminal 2 with a Boeing 787 in it.

You can walk around, poke your nose in an engine, queue to visit the cockpit and so on. It’s compeletely free and, if you’ve never been close to the outside of a modern jetliner (I hadn’t) fascinating. I’ve flown in many 787s, but walking underneath one is very different to sitting inside most of the way to the back.

The engines are huge, which is not surprising but you can get in touching distance to really see just how enormous they are. One thing that kind of surprised me is how (relatively) small the wheels are.

Finally there are a few boards explaining why the 787 is there, apparently various Japanese companies near the airport make significant parts of the 787

Trains

In about a decade the fastest way to get to Nagoya from Tokyo will be the Chuo Shinkansen (中央新幹線) which is a MagLev line currently under construction and due to open in 2027 2034 according to the prophecy. In the mean time if you want that MagLev experience Nagoya has the Linimo Line that is one of the few currently operational MagLev lines in the world.

It’s also a driverless line (for the most part, but I noted someone got on to make sure it stopped at the final station) so if you sit at the front you get a nice view

In almost every way it’s exactly the same as a regular train though. If it weren’t for the lack of rails you would have no idea. In some ways that’s a bit of an anticlimax. In other ways it’s reassuring. It also lacks the high speed of the new shinkansen too.

To be honest the main reason to ride Linimo is to go to the Toyota Automobile Museum.

Automobiles

The Toyota Automobile Museum is a short, well-signed, walk from Geidai-dori (芸大通駅) station on the Linimo and if you take the Linimo from Fujigaoka (change from the Nagoya Yellow line subway), the museum is visible on the left hand side just before you arrive at Geidai-dori.

Aichi prefecture, which Nagoya is the capital city of, is the home of Toyota. There are many Toyota factories and offices and at least two Toyota Museums, this one and another in Toyota head office (Toyota Kaikan Museum - トヨタ会館) in the city of Toyota. Perhaps on my next trip I’ll visit that one but for now let me rhapsodize about the Toyota Automobile Museum.

If you have any interest in cars this museum is a must see. It has some of the very earliest automobiles and replicas of others and almost all of the exhibits are in working order. In fact there are videos of many of them being driven around the grounds.

Some of the early vehicles

It is not a Toyota specific museum - yes there are plenty of Toyota vehicles on display but there are also Citroens, Fords, Mercedes Benzes, Mazdas and just about every other major brand in the world - both surviving and extinct (the major exception are the recent Chinese brands and their electric cars).

A couple of EVs - the first Tesla and the Mitsubishi i EV

If you are even a vague petrolhead - someone who got a kick out of Top Gear, perhaps - you will find this place fascinating. I spent far more time on the older cars than the newer

One thing I found interesting was how boring modern cars are. They all look the same whereas cars from 50 to 100 years ago are so varied - even in the same decade.

Anyway, it is well worth a vist and you should block out at least half a day to do so.

Other Museums

Nagoya has plenty. Here are three that I recommend.

Just two stops from the Toyota Automobile Museum is Ghibli Park and Treasure House as well as a bunch of other stuff from the 2005 Expo that the Linimo was built to serve. I haven’t been to them but people who are into Studio Ghibli have given me strong recommendations to go¹.

Back in the middle of Nagoya is the Tokugawa Art Museum, which I did visit and appreciated. There are a lot of mostly Edo-era samurai culture displays of one sort or another and if that sort of thing interests you then go there instead of/as well as the castle.

Diorama in the Showa Era Lifestyle Museum

Not far from Komaki airport is the Showa Era Lifestyle Museum, which I found absolutely fascinating when we visited it. The Showa era stretched from 1926 - 1989 and the museum is mostly focused on the post-war development of Japan. All sorts of interesting exhibits like toys, household goods, food stuffs, and even old cars if you didn’t get enough of that at the Toyota museum. Entry is free but it seems to be a bit tricky to get there using public transport (a friend of ours from Nagoya drove us there).

Other Attractions

If you show up in summer there’s baseball at the Vantelin dome, which is a blast and strongly recomended if you like the idea of drinking beer and watching a game. In the latter half of July there’s the sumo tournament by the castle. There are various temples and shrines such as Atsuta-jingu (熱田神宮) home to the sacred sword Kusanagi no Tsurugi, one of the three Imperial Regalia of Japan. Finally if you want a genuine castle instead the reconstructed Nagoya castle there’s Okazaki Castle (岡崎城) in Okazaki city not far away by train which is where the Tokugawa family started.

1. e.g this excellent write up

A Guide to Ghibli Park in Nagoya, Japan