Solo Trip Nagoya (August 2023) - Nagoya and Flight of Dreams

 

Ah, land of the rising sun, the beautiful sunrise that greeted me as we near our destination. My favourite country to travel to. It's an introvert's paradise. Red eye flight and all, I was looking forward to my 2 week's adventure here on my own.

Had a sub-par breakfast before the flight landed. 

Nagoya Airport was near the sea, and the landscape while we were landing was quite pretty. It looked a bit hazy too. It was in the middle of summer, and the weather was super hot! Interestingly, I cleared immigration super fast! Very different from when I was in Fukuoka earlier in April, that took almost 1.5 hours to clear. Here in Nagoya, I asked for the foreigner's queue as it wasn't clearly marked, and the line was quite short. I had my QR quote ready and everything, and nobody even asked why I was here alone. I guess I was already in their system and so clearance was not an issue :)

The first attraction I wanted to visit was at the Airport itself, but it doesn't open till 10am. I had cleared immigration by 9am. I was still full and didn't want to spend any money on breakfast or coffee, so I just wandered around the airport. I won't have the chance to visit the attraction on my way home cause my return flight was super early. I saw a Starbuck cafe nearby, and I just love those unique signboard they put out.

Here is another one of the same shop. It just makes the shop more unique, instead of just another uniform Starbuck.

While browsing some souvenir shop, I also got excited seeing this on sale. On my to-do list on this trip, was to visit a Komeda Coffee House for breakfast. Actually, I have three retro cafe on my to-do list that I wanted to visit. Komeda just happens to be one of them. The above is a confectionary of an Ogura Toast. I wanted to eat the real Ogura Toast, red bean paste with butter on a toast. That's the goal!

Anyway, at 10am, I headed to the first attraction, Flight of Dreams!

I am here because it's FREE. A Boeing Airplane Park and Museum right at the airport. I still have my luggage with me, so I went and found a locker to park my luggage first. Luckily the locker service was free too! 

The map showed 3 floor of attraction, but really, it was just one. The 2nd floor and 3rd floor was mainly a food court and cafe. Only the basement had all the exhibit and souvenir shop.

I thought I would be bored here, it was a very masculine exhibition after all. But thankfully there was a lot to see, and I learned a lot about the airport. Luckily there were English explanation available. 

There were also miniature planes and airport scale to look at.

But I guess the main attraction was this Boeing Plane parked there. And people were queueing up to go inside and see it. Everything was in Japanese for this part. And I really didn't want to waste my time queueing to go see a cockpit. So I skipped it. Come to think of it, this trip is a rather masculine trip. Besides Boeing Plane, I also visited Toyota, a Train Museum, and even played Japanese Chess with the local chess club, lol. More on those to come....

There was a Boeing Store next to the museum, and for the first time ever, I bought a souvenir on the very first day of my trip! That has never happened before, cause I'm always very stingy about spending money on souvenir. But I really love the mint box with the Boeing logo on it, and it was but now or never. It cost almost 8sgd too! The impromptu buy must be due to my lack of sleep from the red eye flight. Here's me below with my 'just woke up not enough sleep' taking a photo with the Boeing Plane. Time to head to town!