Traveling from Osaka, we headed to Nagoya with kids in October 2025 excited to start the next chapter of our Japan trip. After this we would spend 3 nights in Hakone and 5 nights in Tokyo, but for now it was time for Nagoya.
Nagoya was my favorite part of the trip. This was despite our baby getting sick enough that he didn’t sleep at all one night, everyone ended up yelling at each other at 3am in the hotel room, and we had to take him to an after-hours urgent care clinic in the morning for medicine. Adventures, adventures.
I had wanted to try a lesser-known town on the way to Tokyo (where we were ending our trip). We toyed with a lot of different places but settled on Nagoya because:
- Nagoya is actually a pretty important city, but I’ve never visited
- We had free hotel nights at the fantastic Hilton there
- There are a plethora of sights and options for manageable daytrips
Day 1: Heading to Nagoya via shinkansen
The baby and myself got a bit of a cold the night we arrived but it didn’t seem too bad — we had a bit of a lie-in in the morning while my husband took our eldest to the science museum. They loved it and spent the entire day there. I considered going to the public bath (sento) museum but in the end settled on this trendy bakery in a lesser-known neighbourhood.
I got a bunch of pastries and went and ate them in the park while my baby just kind of chilled next to me. That was pretty nice! By the time we were done, he was napping in the baby carrier and I was on a bus to the shopping area in Sakai. I spent a deliciously long amount of time at Loft picking out lots and lots of cute stationery for my mother (her Japan souvenir request), then did some clothes shopping and finally found two pairs of cute beach-y trousers for myself (£5 apiece!).
My eldest and husband on the other hand spent the day at the Science Museum which they loved. Very kid friendly and they were there for many hours.
This was a really nice, relaxed day, although I was a bit regretful that we hadn’t got to do the day trip to the maglev museum that we’d been planning on.
Day 2: Inuyama Castle
This is a really easy day trip from Nagoya, and probably one of my favourite days out of my whole trip. Inuyama was so lovely, easy to take in, and the weather was amazing.
We had dengaku at this speciality cafe (a beautiful place but again hard to handle with young kids!).
Then we headed up past the shrines to the castle. The old town street leading up to the castle and the whole vibe of the place was a lot of fun.
We kind of fizzled out for lunch and couldn’t find much good food to eat — I would plan that better next time. We ended up eating chips and takoyaki while baby napped in the carrier on a rooftop overlooking the town.
On the way back, I let my husband head off to the hotel and took the kids to try to get a glimpse of Nagoya Castle. Turns out you really can’t see much from the outside! So we walked home slowly and stopped at this very trendy and cute hotel cafe to try some delicious ogura toast, a Nagoya specialty. The kids as usually wandered around and caused chaos, stressful with vases and things around, but hey….
My son did so well on this trip — he was becoming so independent and capable. We forgot some food there and he went ran all on his own to ask for it from the staff.
Day 3: Toyota Museum
This was a bit of a more laidback day where we went to the Toyota museum (just a short metro ride from our hotel). It’s definitely worth visiting this museum, and was interesting for my baby to crawl around and my son to see all the cars / machines. They have a 30min activity room for kids to sign up for — get your reservation as soon as you arrive in the morning so you can have your turn.
Afterwards, we went to the mall nearby and ate at one of the typically-kid friendly spots in these shopping centres, then I went shopping whilst my husband played with the kids in the kids area. We walked to the European-influenced shopping centre nearby (not much to see but it’s a pretty vibe) and that was our day.
Dinner was Saizeriya which of course feels like you’re going back in time to 1995. I wanted to try the Nagoya eel specialty (hitsumabushi) but didn’t get a chance on this trip. We were pretty worn down by then after taking the kids to lots of not-kid-friendly restaurants and began opting for the easier spots.
Day 4: Tokoname Pottery Trail
This town is awesome! It was fairly easy to get to Tokoname from Nagoya, about an hour. It’s right by the Chubu airport and there is also a plane museum in there but we didn’t have enough to visit. If we weren’t so exhausted from the whole young kids thing, it would probably be easy to combine those two on a day trip.
Tokoname is a bit more of an obscure day trip to take four non-Japanese tourists, and surprisingly this was one of the only times I got the ‘Your Japanese is so good, why?’ commentary which I honestly used to think was mandatory no matter where you travel. My theory is that nowadays the steady inflow of immigrants has rendered it less remarkable to meet a foreigner who speaks the language.
Anyway, this blog post was a great inspiration for our trip.
My friend came up to Chubu to spend the day with us. She drove 2.5 hours to get there!
We walked around and soaked up the atmosphere before heading to this wonderful cafe. It was the highlight of our day despite having to wait awhile to get in. They have an actual kids corner (kitchen), which is a gem in Japan. They had this elaborate treasure hunt to do which occupied my son for ages. It took us from room to room and there’s even a little secret nook. Not even the adults could figure out the puzzle! And the food and beer was so good. Such a unique, relaxing spot.
That night was our last in Nagoya. We went on a shopping spree at Don Quixote. Perfect ending to the day.
Day 5: Baby sickness meltdown
I guess we knew his illness was bacterial, because by this day, suddenly baby got sick all over again and spent the entire night crying and coughing. I think he even coughed up blood. Poor guy. OMG this was not an easy thing to handle when you’re four people in a hotel room at 3am.
We decided to get him seen by a doctor the next day, and they got us the meds super quickly after that. It was not a weekday, but they had no problem seeing us at the after-hours clinic. It was even covered by our insurance later. Regardless, it was only £80 for a course of antibiotics and some cough & sinus meds. It was super tricky getting my son to take the medication over the next few days… But he got better quickly after that.
I have to give a shoutout here to the Hilton Nagoya. They were super helpful organising all this for us. They immediately gave us a very late checkout time without question. I doubt it would have been so simple if I didn’t speak Japanese, but having a hotel deal with the particulars was very useful. Also it’s just a great hotel — their public bath and sauna in the fitness area is amazing after a long day of walking everywhere. I didn’t even use our room’s shower during my stay.
So, we ended up doing very little that day and then took the shinkansen to Hakone, our next stop.
