Nagoya’s not the most beautiful city in Japan. Probably not in the top five. Or the top ten. It’s a city dotted with industries that happen to be on the main shinkansen line, so they might as well spruce it up, select a famous food (their meibutsu is tebasaki; think Buffalo wings with a lot less meat and not nearly as spicy) and drop a couple of shopping complexes with international brands so people on the way east to Tokyo or west to Kyoto or Osaka can drop by and pass the time at an intermediary stop.
It’s not an ugly city, either. A number of rivers cross both edges of the city center, and there is plenty of nature along the streets so it doesn’t look like a dark and gray Dickens novel. The city is convenient with all the creature comforts first-worlders need and desire, so it’s not some middle-of-nowhere truck stop/bedroom community that just takes up space. They have those in Japan, too, but so does every other developed country that is large enough to have built up a few major cities. If Tokyo is New York, Nagoya is Delaware. Nice enough, but not a top destination.
It’s in the middle, is what I mean.
