Nagoya JAPAN
15th July 2009
Nagoya was the last place I visited with Amy before spending the following three weeks in Osaka. We travelled here after speding a night in Fukuoka for Hakata Yamagasa Matsuri, a festival celebrating a 13th century Buddhist preist was carried aloft, sprinkling holy water over victims of a plague. When we got to Nagoya the first thing we saw when we stepped out of the station was a really interesting roundabout (Below). I found it really refreshing, it was such a bold statement, really beautiful and sculptural, and i felt it really made a 'gateway' to the city (I have designed two gateway projects in year one and two at Kingston University- the idea of a gateway is taking a landscape element which is a prominent place on the entrance to a city/ Town and creating a 'gateway' to that City/Town).
The reason we went to Nagoya was to see Nagoya Basho Sumo Tournament at the Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium. Located on the site of the secondary enclosure of Nagoya Castle, there was a beautiful water feature before entering the grounds, on the south east corner. It was a perfect example of how much of an impact water features can have and it was refreshing to see such a successful one; often in Britain i come across water features which don't work any more. (Photo below)
