Nagoya Dining

Known primarily for its manufacturing, its central location, and its busy transport hub, Nagoya has a rep for being a place you only go to get to somewhere else. But steeped in history, with a distinctive cuisine and some stunning areas of natural beauty, I’m here to tell you: Nagoya is bloody ace! Fortunately, it’s not just me flying the Nagoya flag. Elly Llopis and Lena Yamaguchi, too, are very much torchbearers of the opinion that Nagoya – and Aichi as well – is a great place to both live and visit. Having fallen in love with Japan and its design aesthetic, Elly learned Japanese and moved from her native Mallorca, Spain, to Nagoya in 2007, working as a web designer. Becoming besotted with the much-maligned city, she felt a missionary-like zeal to change hearts and minds, and in 2017 began blogging on her website, kawaii-aichi.jp. At around that time, Lena from Germany, who fell for Japan when 18, worked in Tokyo as an IT consultant. However, discovering that it was not her cup of tea, she settled in Aichi, her husband’s home prefecture. Like Elly, she fell in love with the local food and set up a website of…