Nagoya & Shirakawa-go 5-Day Trip Itinerary 🇯🇵 (2025 Travel Guide)
🗓 Itinerary
Day 1 Tenjin All Day
Menya Shishimaru 🍜
For dinner, we went to Menya Shishimaru, a very famous ramen shop with limited seating. We waited in the cold wind for nearly an hour and almost lost our patience.
When the ramen was first served, the broth looked quite oily, but surprisingly it wasn’t greasy at all. Instead, it tasted clean and refreshing. The porcini mushrooms had a flavor very similar to truffle, blending nicely with the soy sauce without being too salty. Totally my kind of taste—I finished every last drop 😋
As for the chashu, the chicken was tender and delicious, while the pork was just so-so. The toppings were varied and satisfying too, including baby corn, fried lotus root, and more. Overall, the cost-performance ratio was excellent.
Menya Shishimaru
Even though the wait was long, eating here felt truly blissful. Definitely worth coming back!
Address: 2-1-1 Kamejima, Nakamura Ward, Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture
Business Hours: Daily 11:00 – 15:00, 17:00 – 21:30
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped by a 7-Eleven nearby and bought a Chiikawa fruit smoothie. I got the banana milk 🍌 smoothie. It took quite a while to make, but watching the Chiikawa animation during the wait was really cute. The taste was just… banana (?), pretty average and not particularly delicious.
Day 2 Going Shopping
KAKO Jam Toast 🍞
Sakae District 🛍️
Day 3 Takayama & Shirakawa-go One-Day Tour
Takayama Old Town 🥛
Shirakawa-go Gassho Village ⛄
Day 4 Inuyama & Osu Kannon
Inuyama Castle 🏯
Osu Shopping Street 🍡
Highly Recommended: カツレツMATUMURA 🍚
Since I didn’t want to eat at a trendy tonkatsu restaurant, I found a place on REDnote that serves miso tonkatsu—it’s said to be relatively unknown yet delicious. I originally thought the price was a bit high, around NT$500 – 600, but after seeing the photos, it looked so tasty that I just had to save it.
Although the appetizers didn’t quite suit my taste, the tonkatsu was seriously, truly, extraordinarily delicious!!! The deeply red meat on the left—I forgot exactly what cut it was—was extremely tender, and together with the crispy coating and miso sauce, it was heavenly. Plus, you can get rice refills 😋 With this quality, there’s no way you could get a meal like this for just over NT$500 in Taiwan.
We went to this tiny spot, super small but honestly kinda boujee. There were like one or two parties ahead of us, and while we were waiting the server came over to ask what we wanted. Low-key thought he might be cute, but with the mask on it was sus—we couldn’t tell.
When we ordered, there was a bit of trouble and the server just laughed—like, straight-up cheeky AF. We were already laughing so hard. Since there weren’t many seats, 🐭 and I went in first. The whole restaurant had this kind of mini fine-dining vibe—very sophisticated—and we took forever with our bags, which made me feel embarrassed and want to laugh. As soon as I sat down and was about to adjust my clothes and scoot forward, the handsome server suddenly helped push my chair for me, and I was so startled, I almost yelled. Soon the appetizer (sesame triangle crackers) arrived, and the server even introduced it to us in English. We couldn’t stop laughing—it’s just over NT$500 for a pork cutlet here, and you get appetizers? Plus a semi-open kitchen? It’s absurdly good value and high-end. I started snapping pics but 🐭 was embarrassed—she was like “don’t just take a photo of one cracker.”
Then came a salad (a small cup with carrot and spinach, plus a cup of dressing). The server made a real effort to introduce the dishes, even using Google Translate—the service was so high-end that it was comical. By the time 🐑 and 🐙 showed up we were already losing it.
The semi-open kitchen made things even funnier, since our seat was in direct view of the chefs: there were three—old, middle-aged, and young—and the youngest chef kept staring wide-eyed at the front (probably watching the handsome server), and we kept thinking the server was about to get roasted by them 🤣
We were cracking up nonstop. 🐑 swore she heard the server say we were “kawaii,” but maybe he meant the “funny” kind, which just made it even more savage. Meanwhile 🐭 kept insisting, “nah, he definitely thought I was cute,” lol. We even tried to peek at the server’s phone wallpaper—someone, maybe 🐑, glimpsed a selfie, so we suspected something. We were kinda trying to peek at the waiter’s phone wallpaper. I forgot who it was, but 🐑 said it looked like a selfie of himself, so we started joking that he might be gay.
Later, 🐭 kept blowing her nose, using tons of tissues until the server finally brought over the whole tissue box. By the way, the pork cutlet was truly legendary!!! I saw online you can get one extra bowl of rice, but was too shy to ask. 🐭 said she’d do it, so she called the server and explained, and he even used Google Translate—the whole thing was hilarious since our English was awful.
Later, the server went into the kitchen to chat and we started dubbing their convo, like making up what they were “actually” saying (we imagined the server was saying 😆
As we left, 🐭 forgot something and went back to get it; she was laughing the whole way. It’s just such great value with such high-end service, and the whole time we were feeling silly and embarrassed—in the end, we were the only ones left in the restaurant.
Next time we’ll remember to make a reservation, otherwise there’s a bit of a wait.
カツレツMATUMURA（Cutlet Matsumura）
Will definitely go back again! The food is so delicious and the service is amazing. Best value!
Address：3F, Dai Nagoya Building, 3-28-12 Meieki, Nakamura-ku, Nagoya, Aichi
Business Hours：Daily 11:00 – 15:00, 17:00 – 22:30
Day 5 Horse Racing & Casual Stroll
Yanagibashi Central Market 🍣
Chukyo Racecourse 🏇🏻
Go Home ✈️
Saw on REDnote that there’s a Lawson after security check at CENTRAIR! This is actually my first time seeing a convenience store past security in a Japanese airport, and I got super hyped 🤩. Means I can finally bring drinks back home! I literally swept up a bunch of Meiji milk 🥛 and my fave pudding 🍮. My friend grabbed a bottle of lemon tea—it was sooo good that I legit ran back and bought two bottles too. Really hope I can run into more convenience stores after security in Japanese airports next time I fly.
Because of buying the plane ticket myself this time, I got to experience flying alone. I was pretty nervous and honestly a bit bored, since I usually can’t sleep for more than an hour on the plane. With budget airlines, there’s no TV either, so all I could do was listen to music and just zone out (｡･з･)ゞ
💸 Personal Expenses
- Peach Aviation Flight Ticket (TPE ↔ NGO): NT$ 10,261 / person
- Accommodation: NT$ 3,151 / person
- Pre-trip Preparations (eSIM): NT$ 172
- Transportation: NT$ 2,077
- Klook Takayama & Shirakawa-go Day Tour (lunch included): NT$ 2,339
- Food & Drinks: NT$ 4,488
- Shopping (including tickets & souvenirs): NT$ 9,279
Total: NT$ 31,767
Nagoya is one of the Japanese cities I would like to visit again. Although there aren’t many places I particularly like, the food there was really delicious! Next time, I might visit cities around Nagoya, such as Toba, Ise, Mie, and so on. This time, I also ate a lot of delicious food! I bought quite a lot of things as well—stocking up for a while. I probably won’t travel abroad again in the near future, so it’s okay to have exceeded my budget 🥲
Funliday: 2025 Japan Nagoya Trip
