Day 9 – Nagoya Station
Nagoya Station (名古屋駅, Nagoya-eki?) is a train station in Nakamura-ku, Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan. It is the world’s largest train station by floor area (446,000 m², 4,800,000 ft²)[1] and houses the headquarters of the Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central). Much of this space is located in the “JR Central Towers” atop the station, as well as in underground concourses. The current station complex was completed on December 20, 1999. An average of 1,140,000 people used it per day in 2005, making it the 6th busiest station in Japan.
The station is adjacent to Meitetsu Nagoya Station, the terminal of the Nagoya Railroad, and Kintetsu Nagoya Station, the terminal of the Kintetsu Nagoya Line.
Via Wikipedia.
A little over halfway from Tokyo to Kyoto, Nagoya is a bustling financial center with one of the largest rail stations in the country. With the Japanese, is is profound how integrated the rail station is with high end retail, shopping and grocery stores. Unlike in the US, where you might have a concourse of shops and restaurants catering to the travelers, the Japanese model does that as well as creating a center within the community at large. Some of that is by extension the station working as a subway hub for communters, but it isn’t just a grab-and-go economy. Some of the best restaurants in the city are in the rail stations. They themselves are destinations for the population.
