Solo Trip Nagoya (August 2023) - Planetarium and Lunch

 

This post is about my visit to the planetarium. I think I've never been to a planetarium before. We have a Science Center in Singapore, but no planetarium. Is an omni-theater same as a planetarium? Anyway, it was almost a 20minutes walk to get there from my hotel, but the building was just amazing! Above is the futuristic view of the place. The round globe thing is the planetarium inside. Cool building, right? Love the dramatic blue skies and giant white clouds behind too. 

There was a long queue to get tickets. I think was stuck in the queue for maybe 15minutes? I got a ticket to the science center as well as the planetarium. For the planetarium show, I purposely requested a children session. The lady pointed this out to me, but I told her it was fine, I wanted the children's session because my Japanese standard was at the children's level! Lol. After getting the tickets, I went to explore the Science Center. There were performances and demo at certain time slot. The first demo I saw was the electricity lab. The demo was pretty impressive, and I was amazed I could understand most of it as it was rather kid friendly. I don't recall seeing such a demo before elsewhere, so I was quite hyped up by it.

There was a deep freezing lab too, which I was curious about. They provide winter clothing for you to wear, and you can go inside a room where the temperature will dropped to below zero. But since I was on a solo trip, I didn't want to risk going in as there were warning signs before entry, in case you suffer from any consequences of being inside.

I also watched the tornado demo, and that too was pretty impressive. The staff actually dressed up like the witch from Wizard of Oz to do the demo. And they used a lot of props to show how tornado sucks up things from the ground etc. 

They also have some dinosaurs, but nothing as compared to the collection in Taichung Natural Science Museum. Plus the rest of the exhibit here were pretty much for kids. So I skipped a lot of it and went over to the next building. 

Nearer to the planetarium were the space and planet exhibit. This was a lot better, with quite detailed modelling and explanation. They have a model of the milky way universe which made everything looked so clear to me too.

There were also remote controlled space rover where you can play with, equipped with cameras and all. It was fun seeing the view of the rover, even though it was just a simulated planet surface.

They also have a projector of the planetarium with explanation of it. Apparently it was the planetarium's 100 year anniversary! Wow. I can't imagine that, coming from a country like Malaysia and Singapore which are pretty young. 

Above is what the inside of the planetarium looked like. I was practically surrounded by kids. The chairs were spaced out, and you could lean back. It was supper comfortable, along with the super cold aircon. I almost fell asleep inside. The session was all in Japanese. But since it was for kids, I was able to understand most of it, and learned some words along the way. And it was fun cause the kids really do participate when asked too. 

After the planetarium show, there wasn't much else to see, so I left. I went in search of an old convenient shop ran by an old couple. I read that they handmade their sando (sandwich) and it was delicious. I found it, and found the price to be quite expensive for home made sandwich. But I wanted to support the mama papa shop, so I bought it anyway and went back to eat it with my ice cold coffee and anmitsu for dessert. The planetarium was worth a visit, and cost me around 10sgd? But I would say the Taichung Natural Science Museum is still my favourite, along with the Britain's Natural Science Museum with it's Charles Darwin center.