Nagoya Travel and Things to Do Guide

The fourth-largest city in Japan by population and the home of the Toyota automobile company, Nagoya is approximately 220 miles west of Tokyo (but only about 80 miles east of Kyoto). More than eight million people live in Nagoya and its surrounding towns, although only 2.4 million live in Nagoya itself. On the Nobi Plain and next to Ise Bay, surrounding the city is some of Japan's most fertile agricultural land. Nagoya event venues include Toyota's new Midland Square headquarters building, which also contains Japan's highest open-air observation deck.Nagoya's airport, currently Japan's eighth-largest, is the artificial island airport of Chubu Centrai International (NGO), which is 22 miles south of the city center of Nagoya. Its service is mainly to Japanese and other Asian cities, but Delta, American, and United all serve Nagoya from the U.S., and both Finnair from Helsinki and Lufthansa from Frankfurt provide flights from Europe.Chief among convention venues, Nagoya Congress Center covers almost a million square feet and contains, among other spaces, the 3,000-seat Century Hall, 22 meeting rooms, a 20,000-square-foot events hall, and a 7,000-square-foot reception hall.Hotel venues in Nagoya include the 774-room, two-tower Nagoya Marriott Associa Hotel, which has 12,000 square feet of meeting space for up to 1,500 persons; the 562-room Nagoya Tokyu Hotel, which has 10 meeting rooms, including the Versailles Ballroom for 1,500 persons; the 450-room Hilton Nagoya, which has 16 meeting and banquet rooms for up to 1,200 persons; the 243-room Meitetsu Grand Hotel, which has two floors of meeting space that includes the Kashiwa banquet room; and the 220-room Hotel Wing International Nagoya, which has a meeting room for 32 persons.There are impressive special event venues in Nagoya: The Aichi Arts Center contains two art museums, a rental gallery, and an arts center with a concert hall and two theaters, while the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts (a sister museum to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) occupies approximately 50,000 square feet on three floors, includes more than 14,000 square feet of exhibit space (a library and a lecture room, among other spaces), and is adjacent to the 246-room ANA Crowne Plaza Hotel Grand Court Nagoya, with meeting space for up to 700 persons. Three other choices are the Toyota Automobile Museum, which has a collection of cars from all over the world, not just Toyotas (example: a 1914 Stutz Bearcat Series 5 from the U.S.), as well as a cafeteria, a restaurant, and an events hall for 250 people; Nagoya Noh Theater, which is on the grounds of the impressive, very Japanese Nagoya Castle, puts on ancient Japanese Noh dramas, and has an exhibition hall that can be rented out outside of business hours, and International Design Center NAGOYA & Design Museum, which has beautiful, cutting-edge Japanese design, a seminar room, and gallery space.Cuisine in Nagoya is dominated by red miso and kishimen, a flat noodle. Great Japanese restaurants for groups include Nadaman in the aforementioned Nagoya Toyku Hotel; Tankuma Kitamise at the aforementioned ANA Crowne Plaza; Maruya Honten, which has four branches and specializes in Japanese beef; Italian restaurant Yoshikawa Enoteca; and Shige Yakitori.