Nagoya

Japan's fourth-largest city, the industrial heart of the country, and the butt of a running joke: Nagoya regularly comes last in domestic surveys asking which city people would like to visit. Locals are aware and have made a kind of peace with it. The joke is also wrong in one specific way, which is the food.

Nagoya cooking is its own tradition and almost none of it travels. Hitsumabushi is grilled eel over rice eaten in three stages, plain, then with condiments, then with dashi poured over. Miso katsu uses the dark, sweet hatcho miso of this region. Tebasaki are peppery fried chicken wings, kishimen a flat wheat noodle, and the morning service at any old coffee shop gets you toast and a boiled egg free with a cup of coffee. Ogura toast is buttered toast with sweet red bean on it, and it is better than it sounds.

The castle has golden dolphins on the roof and a complication: the concrete keep from 1959 is closed to entry on seismic grounds while the city argues about rebuilding it in wood. What is open is the Hommaru Palace, reconstructed in timber and completed in 2018 with cypress joinery and reproduced screen paintings, and it is worth the visit on its own.

Atsuta Shrine, in the south of the city, holds the Kusanagi sword, one of the three imperial regalia. It is never displayed and never will be.

Two museums stand out: the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology, in the company's original loom works, and the SCMaglev and Railway Park with a record-setting maglev test car. Ghibli Park is forty minutes east in Nagakute and needs tickets bought well ahead.