Devin and I arrived at Nagoya at around 9:30 that night. Nearly everyone who was attending the Wakagoi show this year expressed their difficulty in getting a hotel, so most everyone had to book a hotel that was about an hour away! Devin and I were fortunate enough to book a hotel only a couple of train rides away, but that good fortune was accompanied by an impressive bill as well.
Nagoya is the third largest city in Japan, and the place where Cabaret Clubs were first created. That being said, the night life here is just totally happening. Bars of all sorts could be found everywhere, and since it was a Friday night, every one was out enjoying the party scene.
We got into a taxi and asked the driver to take us to the “Mercure Cypress” Hotel. He wasn’t familiar with the place, but since all taxis in Japan have a GPS navigation system in their cars, we figured it wouldn’t be a problem. In fact, all one would need to do in order to navigate to their destination was to punch in the phone number of the place they wanted to go to and the address would immediately pop up. Quite convenient, isn’t it?
For one reason or the other, the taxi driver we got was less than interested in figuring out where the “Mercure Cypress” hotel was. Of course it doesn’t help that pronouncing “Mercure” in such a way that the Japanese would understand isn’t exactly the easist thing to do.
The driver dropped us off by a small, dimly lit intersection off the main road where a single, small restaurant was the only establishment to be seen for a couple of blocks. The driver turned to us and said that our hotel was somewhere in the vicinity and we can just walk to it. Devin wasn’t happy with the driver’s disposition and didn’t think it was worth arguing with him to take us to the front of our hotel like he was supposed to do. He just wanted to get out of the cab.
We got off with our luggage, looked around and nowhere could we find the Mercure hotel. We walked down one road, took a left, took a right and found ourselves surrounded by residential homes. I don’t think we’ll find it here. I stop to ask a taxi driver how to get to our hotel and he seemed quite familiar with it! Yay! We thank him for directions then retrace our steps and go down anotherr road, turn left, turn right, turn left and find ourselves at the very same crosswalk where we began.
Frustrated, tired and wet, we walked towards the main road determined to hail a cab to take us where we needed to go regardless of how ridiculous it may seem.
We call a cab and ask him to take us to the hotel. The cab driver again wasn’t familiar with the place so he punched it intto his GPS.
“It’s right behind you! Just go down into the main intersection and cross the road. You should see it on the left hand side.”
I suppose walking a few more blocks wouldn’t hurt, besides, we could use the exercise. We lug our bags and join the groups of people who were jumping from bar to bar in crossing the intersection. Our hotel was no where to be found.
“There’s a map! Let’s check it out”
“I see cypress hotel. That’s gotta be it. I think it’s back that way.”
“ugh. When are we going to get this right!?”
We walk back to where we came from and as we were waiting for the light to change allowing us to cross the street, Devin suddenly decided to look up. His expression changes then he turns to me with a face that told me we’ve been silly.
“Look up.”
I look towards the direction Devin had just looked and just smiled in exasperation.
Right there, one block from where we were just standing in big bright Katakana letters was the words “Cypress Hotel”. We had been walking for an hour constantly in the wrong direction!
It was our intention to go out that night for a good meal, but after that soujourn, we decided to just get convenience store food and call it a night.
~Oyasumi Nasai! Ja Mata!
