Meijo University

Meijo University is the largest university in Nagoya and indeed the Chubu region of central Japan with over 15,000 students spread out over three campuses in Shiogamaguchi, Yagoto both in Tenpaku-ku and the town of Kani in Gifu Prefecture.

Meijo University was founded in 1926 and has a good reputation for its faculties of Science & Technology and Pharmacy. There are also departments of Law, Economics, Human Studies, Agriculture, Urban Science and Business Management.

The main Shiogamaguchi campus has been modernized over the last decade with the building of the 15-story Tower 75 and two new buildings housing multiple lecture halls.

Meijo's continuing popularity with Chubu students is due to its location near a subway station: Shiogamaguchi on the Tsurumai Line, the modern buildings and a number of popular eateries on campus such as Subway and MacDonald's.

Meijo also has an affiliated high school located out in Higashibiwajima not far from Nagoya Station.

Meijo's annual Open Day will be held this Sunday with the university festival taking place in the first week of November.

Meijo University
Shiogamaguchi 1-501
Tenpaku-ku
Nagoya
468-8502
Tel: 052-832-1151

Maspro Museum Nisshin

マスプロ美術館

The interesting Maspro Museum probably does not get many visitors due largely to its location in the middle of nowhere, at the Maspro factory on the north eastern side of Nagoya.

Visitors who do make the trek out to Araike Station past the Nagoya City Tram & Subway Museum and then a fair walk north will be rewarded by an outstanding collection of late Edo Period and early Meiji Period wood block prints and ukiyo-e.

Most of the prints are focused on the arrival of westerners in Japan from the 1850s onwards and their setting up in the new treaty ports of Yokohama and Kobe and can be seen as a continuation of previous Nanban Art in the early Edo period, which concentrated on the odd antics of the "southern barbarians" or nanban.

Along side this collection are exhibits of Arita ceramics from Kyushu and more local Seto and Tokoname pieces.

A third part of the museum is dedicated to the history of Maspro as a company and a display of some of its hi-tech wireless and satellite TV gadgetry.

Maspro previously sold off its $20 million collection of Picassos and Van Goghs. Christie's defeating rival auction house Sotherby's in a game of jan-ken-pon (scissors, paper, stone) for the rights to auction the paintings.

Maspro Museum
〒470-0194
Nisshin
Tel: 052 804 6666

An infrequent Kururin Bus goes past the museum which is open Monday-Friday and costs 500 yen. No photography is allowed inside.
Google map of Maspro Museum
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Odaka Ryokuchi Koen

Odaka Ryokuchi Koen in Midori-ku in southern Nagoya was certainly built in the period of Post War high economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s and doesn't seem to have changed much since. Think rusty chairs, Asahi Dry and soggy French fries coupled with middle-aged ladies, serving the latter two, still decked out in their 1970s' finery.

This drive-through park offers a number of fun, family entertainments though and is definitely worth a visit if you have wheels: baby golf aka crazy golf, go karts, pedal and row boats on the lake, tennis courts as well as soccer pitches, a driving range, long kiddies' slide and baseball diamonds.

For the boats on the lake choose from the koala or swan head monstrosities and be prepared to shell out 1,000 yen for 30 minutes - it was great though to cool down on yet another globally-warmed Nagoya day, well above 30 degrees Centigrade and very, very humid.

To get here the nearest station is Sakyoyama on the Meitetsu Line one stop before Arimatsu, though the best way to come is by car (parking is free) on Route 1, the old Tokaido Highway.

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Statistics

A German foundation, Bertelsmann Stitfung, has released a report comparing social justice indicators in the year 2011 in the OECD. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development membership is made up of the worlds' major democracies with strong market economies.

Six factors were included in the scoring: poverty prevention, access to education, labor market inclusion, social cohesion and non-discrimination, health, and intergenerational justice

1. Iceland 2. Norway 3. Denmark 4. Sweden 5. Finland 6. Netherlands 7. Switzerland 8. Luxembourg 9. Canada 10. France 11. Czech Republic 12. New Zealand 13. Austria 14. Germany 15. United Kingdom 16. Belgium 17. Hungary 18. Ireland 19. Italy 20. Poland 21. Australia 22. Japan23. Portugal 24. Slovakia 25. South Korea 26. Spain 27. United States28. Greece 29. Chile 30. Mexico 31. Turkey

Source: Daily Kos

Yudofuya Restaurant

Kyoto's Ryoanji Temple's large garden contains the vegetarian restaurant Yudofuya serving yudofu - boiled soy bean curd topped with a mix of seven herbs.

Other things on the menu include beer, sake, rice and juice. The full yudofu set costs 3,300 yen or just yudofu with vegetables is 1,500 yen.

The tatami-style seating looks out over a lovely garden complete with pond and lovely pine and maple trees. An English menu is available.

Yudofuya
13 Goryonoshita-machi
Ryoanji
Ukyo-ku
Kyoto
Tel: 075 462 4742

Japanese Lantern by Wim Swaan

I love browsing through book shops and second hand stores for something to read and it was great to stumble upon a long out of print classic on Japan, Japanese Lantern by Wim Swaan, published in 1965.

It is amazing to read an account of the author's long stay in Japan nearly fifty years ago and marvel at how much has changed (vivid descriptions of emotional family send-offs for night trains to Nara, for example, now more prosaically undertaken in total silence by night bus, photographs of disabled ex-World War II soldiers begging for alms) and how much is still the same (the absurd Japlish of many hotel brochures and advertising pamphlets, popular tourist sights overrun with hordes of school children on excursions).

However, it is the quality and insight of much of the author's prose that makes the book so charming. I particularly enjoyed this musing on the Oriental foot on the night train from Tokyo to Nara: "Opposite, a man lay reading the Ridazu Daijetsu (Readers Digest), his bare feet projecting over the edge of the bunk. I could not take my eyes off his toes. They were never still for a moment: they curled and uncurled, spread and contracted, or waved around like the probing tentacles of a sea-anemone."

Elle Belle

The latest exhibition by Copenhagen-based Japanese artist Yoshiki Nakahara is Elle Belle dedicated to the beauty of women.

The painting shown below is "Danish Career Woman" aka Connie Hedegaard, the former Danish Environment Minister.

Click to enlarge

The exhibition opens Sunday 7th October 2012 in the Belle Art Gallery, Vejlevej 145 Stouby Denmark.