Lots of Shopping....oooh and the foot massages!

We decided to position ourselves at the Westin Nagoya Castle once again as they are in a great location (across from Nagoya castle) and offer free shuttle services to and from the JR Nagoya station.  We've taken a huge liking to this hotel.  To our delight, we've been given a castle view room on the Executive Floor once again. Yipee!! It's nice to get back into the "heavenly bed" after sleeping on tatami for a few nights. We had intentionally planned our two nights in Nagoya at this time as we wanted to take a breather from shuffling around from one city to another.  Plus we wanted to re-energize before we hit up Kyoto and Nara.  We had a long list of shopping "must buy" items thanks to me so these two days allowed us to knock a few things off our list… and some! I personally found that Nagoya has some of the best shopping. Osaka was fun too but I found Nagoya to have more unique boutique like stores and non-department store shops.  Again I wrote a review on particular stores a week back so be sure to check it out for details on where to shop.

I won’t bore you with details of my shopping expedition so I’ll just write about some of the highlights of our two days in Nagoya.

Our friend had wanted us to pick up a vintage Rodimus Prime Convoy so we dropped by Mandarake in the Sakae District. OK, I don’t want to call it creepy as I might offend some people but the store is very “unique”. Rod got a kick out of people watching in the store and from the “interesting” assortment of anime figurines and life size sailor moon looking dolls?  Apparently they are quite real to life if you know what I mean! He overheard two guys having a heated discussion on what outfit to buy for their life size “girlfriend”.  You’d be amazed at the sheer quantity and variety of figurines available. Most of the ones I came across were semi naked if not full in very erotic poses. I guess the store is using some discretion by putting masking tape over the private parts! Oh and the price. It’s not surprising to find price tags that reach hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars; yet they seem to be a very popular store. 

Rod got a sense of nostalgia when we came across the Transformers and Macross section. They were selling quite an extensive selection of authentic vintage toys dating back from when we were kids. You know when the majority of the figurine was made with metal. Not like the mass produced cheap plastic type you find with this generation. The original Rodimus Convoy and Optimus Prime were going for $150USD. We had a good laugh about the silly things we did as kids and put them back on the shelf. As much as it brought back some fond childhood memories, $150 ain’t worth it!

After discreetly darting out of the store in fear that people outside would think I’m “one of them”, we continued our walk in the Sakae District and came across a really cool store/museum called Robot Mirai Department. This place had figurines too but unlike Mandarake, it was really cool and rated G for all ages. On one side of the store was a museum which you had to pay a $10 entrance fee. We’re cheap so we skipped the museum and decided to just peek through the window and enjoy the adjoining store. They had these life size robots which were fully functional and ran tens of thousands of dollars. I’m not sure what they actually do but for that price, they’d better make breakfast or something. They had a few collectables such as Astro Boy and StarWars. We came across a glass case featuring a Star Wars space ship??? I don’t know….anyways it was on sale for $8500USD. People were taking pictures of it so I figure it’s a one of a kind sorta deal so I took a picture of it too. They also had a section where you can build and wire your own Lego like robot. Can you tell from this blog that I am quite the expert in all things robotic and figurine related. Yah ask Rod if you want details on what we actually saw. All I can say was everything was really cool. If you have small children or for that matter a husband, you should definitely drop by this place. It’s even fun for non-techie girls like me as they have a section for really cool and industrial design looking house ware.

Before getting to the highlight of our two nights in Nagoya, I guess I should add at this time that we did stroll around the outside of Nagoya-jo (castle) and had a very nice grab and go lunch from the assortment of food sold by the outdoor food vendors in front of the castle. We plopped ourselves down under the sakura trees and enjoyed our skewers and tako yaki along with our vending machine green tea. How romantic.

OK anyhow the highlight of our two days was ahhhh…..the foot massage spa. Boy was it heavenly after a long 14+ hour day hitting the pavement nonstop. We came across this salon by accident as we made a wrong turn at the underground train station. They say that some of the best memories made during travel is when you get lost and stumble upon a gem. This is exactly what they’re talking about!

The store is called Foot Therapy (how fitting) and they have locations throughout Japan. It seems that most are located in train stations and department stores. It was the best foot massage I have ever had! Don’t get me wrong, North American spas are great for the ambience and experience of spa going but honestly, my tired muscles don’t usually come out very relaxed. However, the experience in Japan was very different. My feet were so rejuvenated that I was ready to hit another 14 hours.    I guess the main difference is that they use a reflexology-acupressure technique to directly massage your key pressure points to eliminate the swelling and muscle tension in your feet.  A 30 minute session ran 3150yen or $35. That’s cheaper than a reflexology session back home. As with all things Japanese, the whole experience was very efficient with friendly staff, organized and extremely soothing. As soon as you enter, you are greeted with a warm towel to wipe your hands, offered tea and water and our shoes were kindly whisked away by the friendly staff. This part was a bit embarrassing as our shoes smelled like dead road-kill on a hot summer’s day. I’m sure they were all dry heaving in the back but being the polite culture that they were, they took away our shoes with a smile. We were then escorted to a communal soaker area where they washed and wiped our feet with warm nice smelling water. After the disinfection process we were told to soak our feet in this warm communal soaker to relax some of our muscles. After a short soak, we were escorted to individual rooms where we were given purple shorts and a t-shirt to change into.  Although it was simply a foot treatment, they wanted you to get comfortable. It didn’t quite make sense to us until we noticed other patrons who were coming in after a long day at work, donning suits. I tell yah, attention to detail and customer service is phenomenal in Japan and this just proves it once again!

The massage was so relaxing that Rod actually fell asleep! Needless to say, we grabbed a listing of all their locations and hit up the spa in Osaka. There we enjoyed a full body massage plus foot massage for 8000yen or $80! I’m hooked and I highly recommend you dropping by after a long exhausting day. It is a very well deserved treat. Oh just one suggestion, some of the locations can get busy so you might want to book ahead or drop in and put your name down. Drop-ins are welcome where available.  Enjoy!